(38a) Designing Nanostructures for High Performance Batteries and Supercapacitors

Storing energy electrochemically involves electronic and ionic processes and chemical transformation inside and at the interface of materials. The ability to engineer nanostructures and their interfaces afford the great opportunities for controlling these fundamental processes, which can ultimately lead to high performance devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Here I will present several examples on designing nanostructures and their interfaces to realize high performance energy storage devices. One example is on designing nanowires and heterostructured nanowires for ultrahigh capacity storage of lithium ions in silicon battery anodes. The challenges of large volume expansion and solid-electrolyte-interphase (SEI) have been overcome. In another example, we have designed nanoporous carbon to encapsulate sulfur for lithium ion battery cathodes, which can addresses many issues related to sulfur. In the third example, paper and textile batteries and supercapacitors have been developed.