Abstract

The depletion of traditional energy resources as well as global warming has evoked considerable attention in developing advanced energy-storage and delivery systems. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are a family of inorganic clay materials, whose structure is based on positively-charged brucite-like layers and interlayer charge compensating anions. Recently, transition metal-containing LDHs materials have attracted much interest in the field of electrochemical energy storage and conversion (e.g., electrocatalysts, supercapacitors and water splitting), ^1-2 owing to their high redox activity, low cost and environmentally friendly nature. We demonstrate the design and fabrication of LDH-based hierarchical materials, including LDHs materials with core-shell structure, LDHs/carbon nanotube architectures, LDHs/conducting polymer materials and LDHs/semiconductor composites; in addition, their performances as electrocatalysts toward ethanol oxidation, photoelectrochemical water splitting and as high-performance pseudocapacitors are studied in detail.^3-7 The results show that LDHs-based hierarchical materials can serve as promising candidates in a variety of areas including electrocatalysts, solar energy conversion and supercapacitor devices.

© 2015 Optical Society of America