Novel Porous Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage
Crystalline porous framework materials show many ideal properties in electrochemical applications in virtue of their high surface area, tunable porosity and remarkable stabilities. Our group employed various methods to tailor a series of hierarchical porous materials. For example, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) constructed by metal ions and organic linkers can be used as the template to synthesize porous metal hybrids, which show intriguing properties in electrochemical applications. The derived metal oxides or metal sulfides display high specific electrochemical capacity and good stability resulting from their high surface area and various porosity.
Phase Change Composites for Thermal Energy Storage
Phase change materials (PCMs) used in latent heat storage systems can store a large amount of energy at a constant temperature. Besides wide applications in the industry, the energy storage nature and phase change properties of PCMs are extensively studied. Adopting porous materials to encapsulate PCMs can impede the leakage of PCMs as well as provide novel properties to the composite, which is one of main research topics in our group.
Porous Materials for Molecular Adsorption and Separation
Novel microporous materials, such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent-organic frameworks (COFs), have shown great potential in gas/organics adsorption, separation and storage owing to large porosity, tunable pore structure and multi-functional groups. We have been endeavoring to develop facile preparation methods for robust MOFs and COFs with long durability under mild operation condition. Our advanced porous materials can attain high adsorption capacity or separation efficiency and be applied to practical usage.
Capturing Carbon Dioxide for A Sustainable Low-Carbon Future
