Ming Ge1
Xiaona Li
Minmin Wang
Tao Qian
Yulin Min
Xiaolei Yuan- 1School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nantong University, Nantong, Jiangsu, China
- 2Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
- 3Shanghai Key Laboratory of Materials Protection and Advanced Materials in Electric Power, Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, China
Editorial on the Research Topic
Interfacial engineering of carbon-based materials for efficient energy conversion
Over the past decade, carbon-based materials, such as simplex carbon materials, heteroatom-doped carbon materials, carbon-transition metal composites, have received the increasing attentions for energy conversion owning to their low cost, good electrical conductivity, and stable structure (Sun et al., 2020). Specially, the diversity in their structure and composition could significantly enhance their applications in various fields, including nanocatalysis, energy conversion, and energy storage (Hu et al., 2021). In general, catalytic reactions usually occur on the surface or interface of electrodes. The interface structure is usually formed between carbon-based materials and other components and can be theoretically used as a channel for the transportation of electrons or intermediates. Therefore, interface engineering is one of the feasible and effective strategies to enhance the performance of nanomaterials, which is the cornerstone for the practical applications (Li et al., 2021). Based on the mentioned above, this Research Topic have successfully collected two reviews and three origin research articles based on advanced synthetic techniques, novel carbon-based nanomaterials, and interfacial engineering of carbon-based materials and their derivatives for the usage in refrigerant materials, water splitting, Li-ion batteries (LIBs), as well as aqueous rechargeable zinc-ion batteries.
For fabricating novel carbon-based nanomaterials, Liang et al. synthesized holey carbon materials with ordered sub-nanometer hole defects by the oxidative cyclodehydrogenation of polyhexaphenylbenzene precursors. They found that the narrow connection between the hexabenzocoronene subunits had weak interlayer interaction energy compared to graphene, thus leading to the easy dispersion in a wide range of solvents. The experiment results successfully exhibited the novel carbon-based nanomaterials as an effective support can be applied for various inorganic nanoparticles (NPs). For example, the composites showed high catalytic activity in the reduction of nitrophenyl when polyhexabenzocoronene network supports iron NPs. Moreover, this Research Topic is also interested in the exploration of novel supports and materials. Wang et al. fabricated three Gd-based magnetic refrigerant materials by the evolution method with H2L and gadolinium salt in the solution of CH3CN/CH3OH. The large values of magnetic entropy have been proved to be excellent candidates as cryogenic magnetic coolants based on Schiff ligand H2L. In addition, such Gd-based magnetic refrigerant materials with many carbon ligands in complexes can facilitate the formation of functional carbon-based materials.
The development of interface engineering is essential to accelerate the water splitting on the carbon-based electrodes, which involves in ligands modification strategies. Wang and Wang provided a review of the recent progress of designing mononuclear catalysts based on ligands design and preparation. In this work, they provided a coherent discussion about the availability of various activity studies for structure-containable molecular complexes. Although some common strategies for preparing metal complexes were presented, they emphasized that the synthetic feasibility and complexity of metal complexes should also be considered.
In LIBs, cathode materials usually consist of active materials, carbon-based materials and binder, and active materials could determine the changing capacity and voltage of a battery. Importantly, the unique properties of carbon-based materials make them become the promising cathode modification materials. Therefore, Zhou et al. provided a feature review that systematically outlines the significant advances of carbon-based materials for cathode materials, including layered LiCoO2 and LiNixCoyAl1-x-yO2, and olivine-type LiFePO4. Specially, they indicated that interfacial effect between cathode materials and different carbon-based nanostructures (e.g. CNT-based networks, graphene-based architectures) can promote the formation of the conductive ion/electron transfer path and increase the charge/discharge capacity, rate and cycle performance. In addition, the challenges and perspectives of carbon-based materials in cathode materials were also provided.
Rechargeable zinc-ion batteries (RZIBs) can offer high safety, low cost, and fast charge/discharge ratings for large-scale energy storage by using aqueous electrolytes. That is because that the usage of water as aqueous electrolytes could facilitate fast ion kinetics, facile processing, reduced safety concerns, and low cost. Jiang et al. reported a facile strategy to eliminate inert Zn4(OH)6SO4·xH2O for the improvement of RZIBs according to the coordination effect by using ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid-diamine (EDTA-2Na) as a coordination additive electrolyte. The stubborn insulated Zn4(OH)6SO4·xH2O that usually deposits on the anode/electrolyte interface can be eliminated timely, leading to the enhanced performance. In this system, Zn2+ was coordinated with the carboxyl group of four acetyl carboxyl groups and N in C–N bonds, which can accelerate the formation of a new chelating structure, thus contributing to a new interface for dissolving stubborn deposition in the electrolyte. In general, this work provides available thought and method for the development of RZIBs with carbon-based electrodes to eliminate the insoluble depositions on anodes due to the inevitable side reactions.
We would like to thank all the authors for their meaningful work and all the reviewers for their valuable contributions to this special issue. We expect that these endeavors will pave the way for further advancements in the design and fabrication of carbon-based materials and their derivatives by using interface engineering.
Author contributions
MG: writing and review. XL, MW, TQ, YM, and XY: co-drafting and editing. All authors have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved the submitted version.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
Hu, W., Zheng, M., Xu, B., Wei, Y., Zhu, W., Li, Q., et al. (2021). Design of hollow carbon-based materials derived from metal–organic frameworks for electrocatalysis and electrochemical energy storage. J. Mat. Chem. A 9, 3880–3917. doi:10.1039/D0TA10666F
Li, L., Liu, W., Dong, H., Gui, Q., Hu, Z., Li, Y., et al. (2021). Surface and interface engineering of nanoarrays toward advanced electrodes and electrochemical energy storage devices. Adv. Mat. 33, 2004959. doi:10.1002/adma.202004959
Sun, X., Bao, J. C., Li, K., Argyle, M. D., Tan, G., Adidharma, H., et al. (2020). Advance in using plasma technology for modification or fabrication of carbon-based materials and their applications in environmental, material, and energy fields. Adv. Funct. Mat. 31, 2006287. doi:10.1002/adfm.202006287
Keywords: interfacial engineering, carbon-based materials, nanomaterials, synthetic strategies, energy conversion
Citation: Ge M, Li X, Wang M, Qian T, Min Y and Yuan X (2022) Editorial: Interfacial engineering of carbon-based materials for efficient energy conversion. Front. Chem. 10:1104992. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1104992
Received: 22 November 2022; Accepted: 23 November 2022;
Published: 02 December 2022.
Edited and reviewed by:
Dafeng Yan, Hubei University, ChinaCopyright © 2022 Ge, Li, Wang, Qian, Min and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Xiaona Li, xli2483@uwo.ca; Minmin Wang, mmwang0528@ntu.edu.cn; Tao Qian, qiantao@ntu.edu.cn; Yulin Min, minyulin@shiep.edu.cn; Xiaolei Yuan, xlyuan@ntu.edu.cn