Yang Zhao

• Professor at Beijing Institute of Technology

Traditional design of conductive hydrogels involves embedding conductive components within a hydrated polymeric network to establish interconnected electron pathways. While the hydration shell of the polymeric network is typically considered insulating, we demonstrate that it can, in fact, enhance electron transport. Using a PEDOT:PSS hydrogel, we...

Traditional design of conductive hydrogels involves embedding conductive components within a hydrated polymeric network to establish interconnected electron pathways. While the hydration shell of the polymeric network is typically considered insulating, we demonstrate that it can, in fact, enhance electron transport. Using a PEDOT:PSS hydrogel, we...

Since respiration responds to many health conditions, it is essential to monitor respiratory signals by constant humidity changes. Herein, a strategy for continuous, wireless, non‐invasive respiration monitoring is proposed by using a wireless energy storage and humidity sensing integrated device (WES‐HSID), which includes a wireless charging coil...

Wireless-charging in-plane microbatteries (MBs) with conformal shape and high-capacity hold substantial promise in advancing the practical applications of complexly configured electronic devices. However, integrating these MBs seamlessly with flexible electronic system remains a challenge as it requires a rational structure design and reasonable ma...

Wireless charging energy storage devices eliminate bulky wires of wearable electronics. However, rigid shape and specific charging energy restrict their applications in space‐limited portable electronics. Herein, an all‐carbon fiber supercapacitor is presented that features shape‐adjustable, packable, and energy‐controllable wireless charging funct...

Solar thermal utilization has broad applications in a variety of fields. Currently, maximizing the photo‐thermal conversion efficiency remains a research hotspot in this field. The exquisite plant structures in nature have greatly inspired human structural design across many domains. In this work, inspired by the photosynthesis of helical grass, a...

In contemporary manufacturing, the processing of structural materials plays a pivotal role in enabling the creation of robust, tailor-made, and precise components suitable for diverse industrial applications. Nonetheless, current material forming technologies face challenges due to internal stress and defects, resulting in a substantial decline in...

Conformable and wireless charging energy storage devices play important roles in enabling the fast development of wearable, non-contact soft electronics. However, current wireless charging power sources are still restricted by limited flexural angles and fragile connection of components, resulting in the failure expression of performance and constr...

Miniature batteries with programmable shape and scalable functions can provide new opportunities in the design of highly compatible integrated circuits and flexible microelectronics. However, achieving these energy supply devices requires the precise formation of highly active electrode materials in a high‐resolution patterned area using appropriat...

Biomass‐based energy storage devices (BESDs) have drawn much attention to substitute traditional electronic devices based on petroleum or synthetic chemical materials for the advantages of biodegradability, biocompatibility, and low cost. However, most of the BESDs are almost made of reconstructed plant materials and exogenous chemical additives wh...

Reclaiming kinetic energy from vibrating machines holds great promise for sustainable energy harvesting technologies. Nevertheless, the impulsive current induced by vibrations is incompatible with conventional energy storage devices. The energy‐management system necessitates novel designs of soft materials for lightweight, miniaturized, and integra...

Flexible sensing electronics have received extensive attention for their potential applications in wearable human health monitoring and care systems. Given that the normal physiological activities of the human body are primarily based on a relatively constant body temperature, real-time monitoring of body surface temperature using temperature senso...

Downsizing electrode architectures have significant potential for microscale energy storage devices. Asymmetric micro-supercapacitors play an essential role in various applications due to their high voltage window and energy density. However, efficient production and sophisticated miniaturization of asymmetric micro-supercapacitors remains challeng...

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the key catalytic reactions for hydrogen fuel cells, biofuel cells and metal–air cells. However, due to the complex four-electron catalytic process, the kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction are sluggish. Platinum group metal (PGM) catalysts represented by platinum and palladium are considered to be...

With the rapid prosperity of the Internet of things, intelligent human–machine interaction and health monitoring are becoming the focus of attention. Wireless sensing systems, especially self-powered sensing systems that can work continuously and sustainably for a long time without an external power supply have been successfully explored and develo...

Efficient synthesis of transition metal hydroxides on conductive substrate is essential for enhancing their merits in industrialization of energy storage field. However, most of the synthetic routes at present mainly rely on traditional bottom-up method, which involves tedious steps, time-consuming treatments, or additional alkaline media, and is u...

Filtering capacitor with compact configuration and a wide range of operating voltage has been attracting increasing attention for the smooth conversion of the electric signal in modern circuits. Lossless integration of capacitor units can be regarded as one of the efficient ways to achieve a wider voltage range, which has not yet been fully conquer...

Filtering capacitors with wide operating voltage range are essential for smoothing ripples in line-powered system, which are still unsatisfactory due to low energy density and limited working voltage scopes. Herein, we report an aqueous hybrid electrochemical capacitor with areal specific energy density of 1.29 mF V ² cm ⁻² at 120 Hz, greater than...

Strongly coupled transition-metal dichalcogenides/carbon hybrids are cost-effective and robust electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction, and further designing quantum-dot structures of hybrid catalysts often maximizes the accessible active sites and facilitates charge transfer and consequently their catalytic performance. However, the ratio...

The development of portable electronics puts forward new challenges for miniaturization of energy storage devices to match them. Micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) with significant advantages have attracted increasing attention recently. MSCs are usually encapsulated in practical use to ensure a stable performance due to uncertainty of electrolyte in ope...

Miniature energy storage devices simultaneously combining high energy output and bioavailability could greatly promote the practicability of green, safe, and nontoxic in vivo detection, such as for noninvasive monitoring or treatment in the gastrointestinal tract, which is still challenging. Herein, we report ingestible and nutritive zinc-ion-based...

Development of wearable and portable electronics promotes the miniaturization of energy storage devices. Microsupercapacitor (MSC) featuring in fast charging and discharging rates, long cycle life, and high-power density stands out from miniaturized energy storage devices, particularly for its small size and adjustable structure which is easily pro...

The industrialization of rechargeable metal-air batteries, especially zinc-air batteries (ZABs), is greatly limited to the low efficiency, high polarization, and short lifetime of oxygen catalysts (both oxygen reduction reaction and oxygen evolution reaction), which still faces challenges. Herein, a novel efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst base...

Currently, the increasing demands for portable, implantable, and wearable electronics have triggered the interest in miniaturized energy storage devices. Different from conventional energy storage devices, interdigital microbatteries (IMBs) are free of separators and prepared on a single substrate, potentially achieving a short ionic diffusion path...

Microbatteries (MBs) are promising candidates to provide power for various miniaturized electronic devices, yet they generally suffer from complicated fabrication procedures and low areal energy density. Besides, all cathodes of current MBs are solid state, and the trade-off between areal capacity and reaction kinetics restricts their wide applicat...

Graphene is considered as a competitive material for the development of photo‐ and electrodevices because of its superior electrical and optical properties. Meanwhile, laser processing technologies with high precision, fast reaction speed, and high maneuverability are widely used for the fast and facile fabrication of functionalized graphene and re...

Scalable production of portable micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) is of critical importance to meet the increasing demand of miniaturized electrochemical energy storage devices in the future, which still remains challenge. Herein, by taking inspiration from temperature-dependent viscosity feature of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), we present a facile...

Multidimensional folded structures with elasticity could provide spatial charge storage capability and shape adaptability for micro-supercapacitors (MSCs). Here, highly crumpled in-plane MSCs with superior conformality are fabricated in situ and integrated by a fixture-free omnidirectional elastic contraction strategy. Using carbon nanotube microel...

Currently, limited by factors such as low working voltage (≤1 V), poor temperature tolerance, and underutilization of electrolytes, pure aqueous symmetric planar microsupercapacitors (PMSCs) show unsatisfactory energy density under wide temperature ranges. To address these issues, a novel strategy is introduced to construct pure aqueous PMSCs with...

With the accelerated development of electronic devices, micro-supercapacitors (MSCs), as energy storage devices that can charge and discharge quickly, have attracted considerable attention. To improve the rate capability of MSCs with consideration of the energy density remains a challenge. We demonstrated a facile method for the preparation of thin...

Selenium (Se) is an appealing alternative cathode material for secondary battery systems that recently attracted research interests in the electrochemical energy storage field due to its high theoretical specific capacity and good electronic conductivity. However, despite the relevant capacity contents reported in the literature, Se-based cathodes...

High integration is the inevitable development trend of the next‐generation intelligent power system. The review presents four integration modes of power systems that combine energy conversion and storage devices, focuses on summarizing and analyzing the all‐in‐one power system with the highest integration degree based on different energy sources....

Abstract The vigorous development in the field of energy conversion and storage devices directly contributes to the full utilization and convenient use of clean energy. However, some drawbacks of independent energy conversion and storage devices, including unstable, insufficient energy output and dependence on external power supply, are difficult t...

Currently, reported aqueous micro‐batteries (MBs) only show unsatisfactory electrochemical performance (≤120 mWh cm–3 volumetric energy density and <1000 μWh cm–2 areal energy density) and it remains challenging to develop durable aqueous MBs that can simultaneously offer both high volumetric and areal energy density. Herein, we have adopted an in‐...

Ultratransparent electrodes have attracted considerable attention in optoelectronics and energy technology. However, balancing energy storage capability and transparency remains challenging. Herein, an in situ strategy employing a temporally and spatially shaped femtosecond laser is reported for photochemically synthesizing of MXene quantum dots (M...

Three-dimensional (3D) graphene framework with integration of multiple functions is attractive to the broad sustainable applications, such as flame-retardant, heat-insulating, and catalysis. Herein, an efficient multifunctional graphene-based framework coupled with the in-situ formed boron nitride quantum dots is developed for the first time. By co...

Downsizing electrode architectures provides great potential for the fabrication of microscale energy storage devices. With their extended voltage window and high energy density, asymmetric microsupercapacitors (MSCs) play an essential role in various applications. However, the efficient manufacturing of asymmetric MSCs remains challenging. Herein,...

Graphene Materials With a unique two-dimensional structure, graphene material possesses numerous fascinating physical and chemical properties which endow it as promising candidate component or building block to boost such miniature devices system with superior performance and multifunctionality, including but not limited to active material, flexibl...

Electronic skin and flexible wearable devices have attracted tremendous attention in the fields of human-machine interaction, energy storage, and intelligent robots. As a prevailing flexible pressure sensor with high performance, the piezoresistive sensor is believed to be one of the fundamental components of intelligent tactile skin. Furthermore,...

Self-healable aqueous batteries can improve their service lifetime and solve safety issues induced by device failure during large deformations at room temperature. At low temperatures (e.g. -20 °C), they generally lose most of their electrochemical performance and self-healing function since water molecules in aqueous electrolytes are inevitably fr...

Filtering capacitors with high energy densities are of critical importance in stabilizing the pulse signal of circuits that require the conversion of alternating current to direct current, which is however far from satisfactory at current stage due to lack of a reasonable design. Here, we report an ultrafast aqueous electrochemical capacitor based...

The development of miniature energy harvesting and storage devices with considerable performance is urgently‐needed for the increasing demand of diverse electronics that require portable and wearable functions. With a unique two‐dimensional structure, graphene material possesses numerous fascinating physical and chemical properties which endow it a...

Currently, rechargeable electrochemical batteries generally operate on one reversible electrochemical reaction during discharging and charging cycles. Here, a cascade battery that couples two sequential electrochemical reactions in a single battery is proposed. Such a concept is demonstrated in an aqueous Zn–S hybrid battery, where solid sulfur ser...

Advanced inorganic solid electrolytes (SEs) are critical for all‐solid‐state alkaline metal batteries with high safety and high energy densities. A new interphase design to address the urgent interfacial stability issues against all‐solid‐state sodium metal batteries (ASSMBs) is proposed. The grain boundary phase of a Mg²⁺‐doped Na3Zr2Si2PO12 condu...

Twin graphene can introduce stable and extended defects to energy band engineering, giving unique electron transport properties, which is expected to have potential applications in the fields of magnetism, spin transport or photoluminescence. This study proposes a method of using electric-field-assisted temporally-shaped femtosecond laser ablation...

Symmetric aqueous microsupercapacitors (MSCs) generally show a low working voltage (≤1 V) and narrow operating temperature window in the vicinity of 25 °C due to the poor temperature tolerance and instability of conventional aqueous electrolytes under high voltage. It is challenging to develop MSCs that can offer a high‐voltage output (>2 V) under...

As high performance and safety alternatives to the batteries with organic electrolytes, aqueous zinc‐based batteries are still far from satisfactory in practical use because of the limitation of the intercalation reaction mechanism and the strict requirements for the cathodes. Very recently, zinc‐based dual electrolytic batteries (DEBs), where the...

Defective carbon material, especially for graphene, has attractive in the energy conversion and storage field due to its fascinating surface structural and electronic properties. The defective graphene has been synthesized either by high temperature calcination of inorganic salt or from the pristine graphene (or graphene oxide) by violent chemical...

Microdevice integrating energy storage with wireless charging could create opportunities for electronics design, such as moveable charging. Herein, we report seamlessly integrated wireless charging micro-supercapacitors by taking advantage of a designed highly consistent material system that both wireless coils and electrodes are of the graphite pa...

Intelligent hydrogels usually exhibit environmentalstimulus responsiveness when the external environment changes based on a unique three-dimensional network formed by cross-linking with chemical bonds or physical interactions which makes it play an essential role in biomedicine tissue engineering softrobotics and otherfields The femtosecond laser d...

At relatively low temperature (e.g, -30 oC), most flexible supercapacitors that work well at room temperature will lose their stretchability due to the poor cold intolerance of conventional electrolytes and...

Due to the rapid development of portable, wearable and implantable electronics in the fields of mobile communications, biomonitoring, and aerospace or defense, there is an increasing demand for miniaturized and lightweight energy storage devices. Micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) possessing long lifetime, high power density, environment friendly and saf...

Efforts to impart responsiveness to environmental stimuli in artificial hydrogel fibers are crucial to intelligent, shape-memory electronics and weavable soft robots. However, owing to the vulnerable mechanical property, poor processability, and the dearth of scalable assembly protocols, such functional hydrogel fibers are still far from practical...

Microdevice integrating energy storage with wireless charging could provide new opportunities for electronics design, such as moveable charging. Herein, we report a seamlessly integrated wireless charging micro-supercapacitors (IWC-MSCs) by taking advantage of a designed highly consistent material system that both wireless coil and electrode are of...

The desalination technologies of sea water are becoming of importance in providing sustainable fresh water. Graphene, as a fashion of two‐dimensional carbon monolayer, has emerged as a promising candidate to build up the material platform for water desalination. In this review, we summarize the development of tunable graphene systems applied in thr...

Benefiting from unique excellent physical and chemical characteristics, graphene has attracted widespread attention in the application of electrocatalysis. As promising candidate, graphene is usually regulated with surface defects, heteroatoms, metal atoms and other active materials through covalent or non‐covalent bonds to substitute for the noble...

Rapid development of portable and wearable electronic devices has triggered increased research interest in small‐scale power sources, especially in micro‐supercapacitors (MSCs) because of their high power densities, long service life, and ability to be charged and discharged quickly. Graphene, an ideal two‐dimensional energy‐storage electrode mater...

Fast-growing demand of painless diagnosis with high security and accuracy during detection impels the miniaturization of medical appliances. Owing to the uncertainties of the pathological properties for most reported biocompatible materials and to discontinuity of electrode components under complex and variable surface strains, the new-emerging deg...

In this work, a new type of hybrid energy storage device is constructed by combining the zinc-ion supercapacitor and zinc-air battery in mild electrolyte. The reduced graphene oxide with rich defects, large surface area, and abundant oxygen-containing functional groups is used as active material, which exhibits two kinds of charge storage mechanism...

Microsized supercapacitors (mSCs) with small volume, rapid charge–discharge rate, and ultralong cyclic lifetime are urgently needed to meet the demand of miniaturized portable electronic devices. A versatile self‐shrinkage assembling (SSA) strategy to directly construct the compact mSCs (CmSCs) from hydrogels of reduced graphene oxide is reported....

Benefiting from unique planar structure, high flexibility, splendid thermal, and electric properties; graphene as a crucial component has been widely applied into smart materials and multi-stimulus responsive actuators. Moreover, graphene with easy processing and modification features can be decorated with various functional groups through covalent...

Spontaneous electricity generation through water evaporation is becoming a hot research area. However, low power output, limited material availability and unscalable fabrication largely hinder its wide applications. Here, we report scalable painting and blade coating approaches for mass production of flexible hydroelectric film (HEF) based on solid...

The construction of multi-dimensional, diversified micro-supercapacitors (MSC) is urgently needed for the fast-changing flexible and wearable microelectronics, which still meets challenges of tedious construction and difficult integration. Herein, a laser direct writing strategy has been developed for the one-step preparation of multiscale MSCs fro...

To achieve high energy and power density simultaneously in miniaturized electronic devices, a zinc-ion micro-supercapacitor (ZmSC) by integrating the battery-type zinc micro-anode and the capacitor-type carbon nanotube micro-cathode is constructed for the first time. In the meanwhile, an electroplating method is developed to in situ replenish zinc...

The increasing growth in demand of portable and wearable electronics impels the exploration of flexible and integrated energy storage devices. Owing to the predominant advantages of cost-effective, flexibility, and easy-processing, the paper-based micro-supercapacitors have attracted extensive attention. In this work, the integrated polypyrrole/gra...

In article number 1801809, Liangti Qu and co‐workers establish large‐scale series‐connected asymmetrical micro‐supercapacitors (AMSCs) on a flexible substrate through laser direct writing technology. The integrated AMSC array with the high voltage output exhibits a feasibility for practical application by combination with energy conversion (e.g., s...

The micro‐supercapacitors are of great value for portable, flexible, and integrated electronic equipments. Here, the large‐scale and integrated asymmetrical micro‐supercapacitor (AMSC) array is fabricated in virtue of the laser direct writing and electrodeposition technology. The AMSC shows the ideal flexibility, high areal specific capacitance (21...

The rational design of an efficient and robust oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalyst is vital for energy conversion and storage system, especially for metal-air battery. Herein, we report a highly nanocrumpled and nitrogen, phosphorus-codoped nanocarbon (NC-NPC) synthesized by directly pyrolysis of melamine and triphenylphosphine. With th...

Researching on green primary explosives with lead-free and excellent ignition performance is of significance for practical applications. In this work, we have developed a novel, green and facile strategy to synthesize copper azide@porous carbon hybrids (CA@PC) based on ionic crosslinked hydrogel with the low-cost cellulose derivatives as starting m...

Highly efficient platinum-alternative bifunctional catalysts by using abundant non-noble metal species are of critical importance to the future sustainable energy reserves. Unfortunately, current electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are far from satisfactory because of lacking reasonable desi...

Zero-dimensional MoS2 quantum dots (QDs) possess distinct physical and chemical properties, which have garnered them considerable attention and facilitates their use in a broad range of applications. In this study, we prepared monolayer MoS2 QDs using temporally shaped femtosecond laser ablation of bulk MoS2 targets in water. The morphology, crysta...

Nowadays, energy generation and storage are two important topics. Unfortunately, conventional energy generators are not capable of responding to environmental changes, while traditional energy storage devices lack special functionalities apart from supplying electricity. Benefiting from exceptional physicochemical properties, graphene-based materia...

A rationally assembled three-dimensional graphene framework coupled with interconnected molybdenum/tungsten oxide nanosheets (MoO3/WO3-GF) has been developed via a one-step template-free strategy. With the unique nanostructure, the obtained anode material not only exhibits high reversible capacity of about 1000 mA h g⁻¹, approaching to the theoreti...

Based on the spontaneous redox reaction between metal and graphene oxide, a novel type of metal/graphene oxide (M/GO) batteries is developed to convert chemical energy into electricity, including Li/GO, Na/GO, Zn/GO, Fe/GO, and Cu/GO batteries. They are fabricated via the simple assembly of metal foils with GO films, in which M plays the role of an...

A flexible integrated supercapacitor based on three dimensional reduced graphene oxide/graphene oxide/reduced graphene oxide (RGO-GO-RGO) foam has been fabricated via a laser direct writing strategy. The supercapacitor with outstanding mechanical properties shows a high capacitance performance which can be easily regulated by controlling the compre...

The high specific surface area and the excellent mechanical, electrical, optical and thermal properties of graphene make it an attractive component for high-performance stimuli-responsive or ‘smart’ materials. Complementary to these inherent properties, functionalization or hybridization can substantially improve the performance of these materials....

The development of self-supporting binder-free catalysts is of great significance for the practical application of electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this work, we report a rationally assembled two dimensional (2D) free-standing film based on the 1D molybdenum carbide nanoribbons in between with the nitrogen doped graphene nanol...

The development of a facile strategy for conversion of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) into crystalline graphite is of great practical significance and still remains challenging. Herein, rationally assembled crystalline‐intercrossed graphite nanocapsules (CI‐GNCs) have been realized by a one‐step electrochemically induced strategy with the assistance...

Efficient utilization of solar energy for clean water is an attractive, renewable and environment-friendly way to solve the long-standing water crisis. For this task, we prepared the long-range vertically aligned graphene sheets membrane (VA-GSM) as the highly efficient solar thermal converter for generation of clean water. The VA-GSM was prepared...

Mesoporous materials have attracted considerable interest due to their huge surface areas and numerous active sites that can be effectively exploited in catalysis. Here, 2D mesoporous graphitic-C3N4 nanolayers are rationally assembled on 2D mesoporous graphene sheets (g-CN@G MMs) by in situ selective growth. Benefiting from an abundance of exposed...

The rational design and construction of carbon nanostructures, particularly those assembled from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene because of their superior synergistic advantages, are of significance for the development of metal-free electrocatalysts with low cost and high activity in energy conversion and storage fields. Herein, we report a hi...

With the development of portable electronics, integrated graphene microstructures and devices have attracted increasing attention due to their environment-benign, lightweight feature with small occupied area. Laser irradiation technique with advantages of rapid processing speed, large scan area and nanometer spatial resolution has been widely studi...

Moisture-powered potential switching has been achieved by establishing ion channels and oxygen-functional-group gradient in graphene oxide nanoribbon network assemblies. The resulting flexible membrane is used to fabricate breath-powered write-once-read-many-times-type memory devices with a remarkably low error risk (ON/OFF ratio of 10(6) ), and lo...