Yuesheng Wang

Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec

The rational design of non-Pt oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts and catalyst layers in fuel cells is largely impeded by insufficient knowledge of triple-phase boundaries (TPBs) in the micropore and mesopore ranges. Here, we developed a size-sensitive molecular probe method to resolve the TPB of Fe/N/C catalyst layers in these size ranges. M...

The sluggish kinetics and mutual interference of oxygen evolution and reduction reactions (OER and ORR) in the air electrode resulted in large charge/discharge overpotential and low energy efficiency of Zn-air batteries. In this work, we designed a breathing air-electrode configuration in Zn-air batteries using P-type Ca 3 Co 4 O 9 and N-type CaMnO...

Developing robust and high active non-precious electrocatalysts for the hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction (HER/OER) is crucial for the industrialization of hydrogen energy. In this study, we prepared a highly active and durable single-atom W doped NiS0.5 Se0.5 nanosheet@NiS0.5 Se0.5 nanorod heterostructure (W-NiS0.5 Se0.5 ) electrocatalyst. W-NiS0...

The research interest in energy storage systems (e.g. batteries and capacitors) has been increasing over the last years. The rising need for electricity storage and overcoming the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources have been potent drivers of this increase. Solar energy is the most abundant renewable energy source. Thus, the combinatio...

In commercial lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the negative electrode (conventionally called the anode) is generally fabricated from graphite. For enhanced performance and critical safety considerations, LIBs must be constructed such that the capacity of the negative electrode is higher than that of the positive electrode. This condition imposed by sa...

Room-temperature Na-ion batteries have attracted great interest for over a decade owing to their natural abundance and similar intercalation chemistry with Li-ion. However, due to the uncontrolled decomposition of electrolyte and formation of solid electrolyte interphase, the large majority of sodium anode materials exhibit extremely low initial Co...

Developing robust nonprecious electrocatalysts towards hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction (HER/OER) is crucial for the spread of hydrogen energy industrialization. Here, we prepared a highly active and durable electrocatalyst of W single-atoms doped NiS 0.5 Se 0.5 nanosheets@NiS 0.5 Se 0.5 nanorods heterostructure (W-NiS 0.5 Se 0.5 ). The W-NiS 0.5...

An Fe/N/C catalyst derived from the pyrolysis of metal–organic frameworks, for example, a zeolitic‐imidazolate‐framework‐8 (ZIF‐8), has been regarded as one of the most promising non‐precious metal catalysts toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). However, its ORR mass activity is still much inferior...

Energy storage with high energy density and low cost has been the subject of a decades-long pursuit. Sodium-ion batteries are well expected because they utilize abundant resources. However, the lack of competent cathodes with both large capacities and long cycle lives prevents the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries. Conventional cathodes wit...

Metal and nitrogen-doped carbon (M-N-C) materials have been considered as the most promising non-precious metal oxygen reduction (ORR) catalysts to replace expensive Pt catalysts. Due to high Fenton catalytic activity of Fe element and the resulting instability, Co-based N–C (Co–N–C) catalysts without Fenton catalytic activity should be a worthier...

Developing highly‐efficient non‐noble‐metal electrocatalysts for water splitting is crucial for the development of clean and reversible hydrogen energy. Introducing lattice strain is an effective strategy to develop efficient electrocatalysts. However, lattice strain is typically co‐created with heterostructure, vacancy, or substrate effects, which...

The intrinsic liquid interface of Na-K alloy allays concerns about dendrite growth on metal anodes that are thermodynamically within the room temperature (20–22 °C). Nevertheless, it hinders the formation of a stable electrode structure due to the inferior wettability induced by considerable liquid tension. In addition, the dominant ionic carrier i...

Hard carbon (HC) is the most feasible anode for Na-ion batteries (NIBs). However, HC electrodes suffer from low initial coulombic efficiency (ICE), poor rate capability and cyclic instability. Here, a systematic investigation was carried out to understand the effect of Na salt, esters-based solvent and concentration on the electrochemical performan...

In article number 2002203, Tian Sheng, Shu‐Hui Sun, Jiayin Yuan, and co‐workers propose and verify atomically dispersed pyrrole‐type Fe‐N4 sites supported on hierarchically porous carbon membranes as real active sites for the electrochemical hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR), which will open up the future exploration of the metal‐Nx catalysts for...

Developing high activity and low-cost materials to produce hydrogen by the sustainable way of photoelectrochemical is key to social development. The abundance and inexpensive Cu2O has been received increasing research as its suitable energy level for photocatalytic water reduction. However, the fast charge recombination rate and the sluggish cataly...

The rational design of catalytically active sites in porous materials is essential in electrocatalysis. Herein, atomically dispersed Fe‐Nx sites supported by hierarchically porous carbon membranes are designed to electrocatalyze the hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR), one of the key techniques in electrochemical nitrogen transformation. The high i...

Sodium manganese hexacyanoferrate (Na x MnFe(CN) 6) is one of the most promising cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) due to the high voltage and low cost. However, its cycling performance is limited by the multiple phase transitions during Na + insertion/ extraction. In this work, a facile strategy is developed to synthesize cubic and...

Alkaline direct hydrazine (N2H4) fuel cells (DHFCs) are considered one of the most promising liquid-fed fuel cells because of their high energy density, high theoretical voltage, and zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, the lack of a suitable electrolyte membrane impedes the further development of alkaline DHFC. Herein, a potassium hydroxi...

Liquid electrolytes used in Li-ion batteries are flammable and slowly degrade to form a solid electrolyte interface (SEI) that irreversibly consumes lithium, decreasing the Coulombic efficiency of the battery. In addition, lithium anodes undergo severe morphology changes during cycling and Li dendrites are formed, which may cause short circuits ins...

The intrinsic bottleneck of graphite intercalation compound mechanism in potassium-ion batteries necessitates the exploitation of novel potassium storage strategies. Hence, utmost efforts have been made to efficiently utilize the extrinsic pseudo-capacitance, which offers facile routes by employing low-cost carbonaceous anodes to improve the perfor...

Pt-based catalysts for the methanol fuel electroxidation typically suffer from the CO intermediate poisoning. Herein, we incorporated secondary Ni element into PtPd hollow nanocrystals (HNCs) to fabricate trimetallic NiPtPd-HNCs catalyst with superior CO tolerance and high activity for methanol electro-oxidation. The as-prepared trimetallic NiPtPd-...

O3/P2-layered oxides, especially O3–NaCrO2, have been widely investigated as cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries due to their high stability and flexible synthesis procedure, but their low electron conductivity, the toxicity of Cr(VI) and cation disorder limit their applications. Here, we present O3–Na(Cr0.8Mn0.2)O2 as a promising cathode, w...

Hard carbon is deemed to be a most promising anode materials for sodium—ion batteries (SIBs), while, the issues of low capacity and low initial coulombic efficiency still exist limiting the development of SIBs. Although high temperature carbonization of biomass materials under nitrogen or argon atmosphere is a common method for preparation of hard...

Active and durable electrocatalysts for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) are of great importance to the practical application of direct methanol fuel cell technology. Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to optimize the electrocatalysts, these electrocatalysts still fall far short of expectation and suffer from rapid activity loss. Herein...

Sodium-ion batteries offer a promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries due to their low cost, environmental friendliness, high abundance of sodium, and established electrochemical process. However, problems, such as low capacity, low storage voltage and capacity fade of electrode materials, must be resolved for the applications of sodium ion b...

The main challenges facing rechargeable batteries today are: (1) increasing the electrode capacity; (2) prolonging the cycle life; (3) enhancing the rate performance and (4) insuring their safety. Significant efforts have been devoted to improve the present electrode materials as well as to develop and design new high performance electrodes. All of...

Room‐temperature sodium‐ion batteries have attracted great attentions for large‐scale energy storage applications in renewable energy. However, exploring suitable anode materials with high reversible capacity and cyclic stability is still a challenge. The VS4, with parallel quasi‐1D chains structure of V⁴⁺(S2²⁻)2, which provides large interchain di...

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are in the spotlight because of their potential use in large-scale energy storage devices due to the abundance and low cost of sodium-based materials. There are many SIB cathode materials under investigation but only a few candidate materials such as carbon, oxides and alloys were proposed as anodes. Among these anode ma...

Recently, sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), regarded as promising supplements for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), especially in the large-scale energy storage field, are attracting more and more attention. However, the limited suitable cathode materials hinder the wide commercialization of SIBs. Given this aspect, in this work, a new layered oxide with 4d...

Room-temperature sodium-ion batteries have attracted great attentions for large-scale energy storage applications in renewable energy. However, exploring suitable anode materials with high reversible capacity and cyclic stability is still a challenge. The VS 4 , with parallel quasi-1D chains structure of V 4+ (S 2 2−) 2 , which provides large inter...

The high-temperature β-phase NaMnO2 is a promising material for Na-ion batteries (NIBs) due to its high capacity and abundant resources. However, the synthesis of phase-pure β-NaMnO2 is burdensome and costineffective because it needs to be sintered under oxygen atmosphere at high temperature and followed by a quenching procedure. Here we first repo...

High-performance and long-cycling rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have been in steadily increasing demand for the past decades. Nevertheless, the two dominant anodes at the moment, graphite and L4T5O12, suffer from a safety issue of lithium plating (operating voltage at ∼ 0.1 V vs. Li⁺/Li) and low capacity (175 mAh/g), respectively. Here, we rep...

Aqueous lithium-ion batteries are emerging as strong candidates for a great variety of energy storage applications due to their low-cost, high-rate capability and high safety. Exciting progress has been made in the search for anode materials with high capacity, low toxicity and high conductivity; yet most of the anode materials, due to their low eq...

Delivery of high‐energy density with long cycle life is facing a severe challenge in developing cathode materials for rechargeable sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs). Here a composite Na0.6MnO2 with layered–tunnel structure combining intergrowth morphology of nanoplates and nanorods for SIBs, which is clearly confirmed by micro scanning electron microscop...

The growing demands for large-scale energy storage devices have put a spotlight on aqueous sodium-ion batteries, which possess a number of highly desirable features, such as sodium abundance, low cost and safety over organic electrolytes. While lots of cathode materials were reported, only few candidate materials like active carbon and NaTi2(PO4)3...

Potassium ion batteries are potential energy storage devices owing to their low cost and good K⁺ diffusion kinetics due to the small Stoke's radius. Here, we report a layered TiS2 cathode material, demonstrating outstanding potassium storage cycling and rate performances in ether-based electrolyte, with a capacity of 80 mAh g⁻¹ at 20 C and 63 mAh g...

Narrow electrochemical stability window (1.23 V) of aqueous electrolytes is always considered the key obstacle preventing aqueous sodium-ion chemistry of practical energy density and cycle life. The sodium-ion water-in-salt electrolyte (NaWiSE) eliminates this barrier by offering a 2.5 V window through suppressing hydrogen evolution on anode with t...

Hard carbon anode materials for sodium-ion batteries (SIB) have usually been tested in half-cells by cycling between 0-2 V, and is believed to exhibit low rate capability. However, we find that the specific capacity, the rate performance, and the cycling performance may all be severely underestimated with the traditional half-cell cycling evaluatio...

Si nanoparticle (Si-NP) composite anode with high rate and long cycle life is an attractive anode material for lithium-ion battery (LIB) in hybrid electric vehicle (HEV)/pure electric vehicle (PEV). In this work, a carbon nanotube (CNT)/reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/Si nanoparticle composite with alternated structure as Li-ion battery anode is prepa...

Graphene is intensively investigated in various energy storage and conversion systems such as fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors. Despite the exponential increase of the number of publications related with graphene, the practical application of graphene in energy storage and conversion still has many uncertainties, but the reason is rarely...

A facile one-pot hydrothermal strategy is applied to prepare Co and F co-doped SnO2 (Co-F/SnO2) nanoparticles, which exhibits a unique rice-shaped self-similar structure. Compared with the pristine and Co-doped counterparts (SnO2 and Co/SnO2), Co-F/SnO2 electrode demonstrates higher capacity, better cyclability and rate capability as anode material...

Room-temperature sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have shown great promise in grid-scale energy storage, portable electronics, and electric vehicles because of the abundance of low-cost sodium. Sodium-based layered oxides with a P2-type layered framework have been considered as one of the most promising cathode materials for SIBs. However, they suffer f...

Room-temperature sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have shown great promise in grid-scale energy storage, portable electronics, and electric vehicles because of the abundance of low-cost sodium. Sodium-based layered oxides with a P2-type layered framework have been considered as one of the most promising cathode materials for SIBs. However, they suffer f...

Tin dioxide (SnO2) is a widely investigated lithium (Li) storage material because of its easy preparation, two-step storage mechanism and high specific capacity for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In this contribution, a phase-pure cobalt-doped SnO2 (Co/SnO2) and a cobalt and nitrogen co-doped SnO2 (Co-N/SnO2) nanocrystals are prepared to explore the...

Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the newly emerging area of sodium-ion batteries, as a promising supplement for lithium-ion batteries. Although many cathode materials have been proposed, most of these have limitations for practical applications, such as a low capacity or a poor cycling performance. Here, sodium-deficient O3-Na0.9[Ni0...

Aqueous sodium-ion batteries have shown desired properties of high safety characteristics and low-cost for large-scale energy storage applications such as smart grid, because of the abundant sodium resources as well as the inherently safer aqueous electrolytes. Among various Na insertion electrode materials, tunnel-type Na0.44MnO2 has been widely i...

Sodium-ion batteries are promising for grid-scale storage applications due to the natural abundance and low cost of sodium. However, few electrodes that can meet the requirements for practical applications are available today due to the limited routes to exploring new materials. Here, a new strategy is proposed through partially/fully substituting...

Most P2-type layered oxides exhibit Na(+)/vacancy-ordered superstructures because of strong Na(+)-Na(+) interaction in the alkali metal layer and charge ordering in the transition metal layer. These superstructures evidenced by voltage plateaus in the electrochemical curves limit the Na(+) ion transport kinetics and cycle performance in rechargeabl...

The aqueous sodium-ion battery system is a safe and low-cost solution for large-scale energy storage, because of the abundance of sodium and inexpensive aqueous electrolytes. Although several positive electrode materials, for example, Na0.44MnO2, were proposed, few negative electrode materials, for example, activated carbon and NaTi2(PO4)3, are ava...

Mn evolution has long been considered critical for understanding the capacity fading of spinel electrodes in batteries. However, the detailed mechanism is still under debate; chemical evolution and distribution of the detrimental Mn is yet to be experimentally clarified. Here we perform a comparative soft X-ray absorption spectroscopic study on two...

Na3[Ti2P2O10F] was synthesized by a hydrothermal method. It has an open framework structure consisting of TiFO5 octahedra and PO4 tetrahedra. The feasibility of Na3[Ti2P2O10F] as an anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) was first studied. Na3[Ti2P2O10F] exhibits a reversible capacity of more than 200 mAh g-1 at a discharge/charge current...

Sodium-ion batteries have attracted considerable interest as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for electric storage applications because of the low cost and natural abundance of sodium resources. The materials with an open framework are highly desired for Na-ion insertion/extraction. Here we report on the first visualization of the sodium-ion...

Supporting Information

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are a promising commercial alternative to lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for large-scale and low-cost electrical energy storage applications in the near future. However, the absence of appropriate negative electrode material hinders their development. In this contribution, we synthesized a monodispersed hard carbon spherul...

In response to the ever-increasing global demand for viable energy-storage systems, sodium and potassium batteries appear to be promising alternatives to lithium ion batteries because of the abundance, low cost and environmental benignity of sodium/potassium. Electrical energy storage via ion-intercalation reactions in crystalline electrodes is cri...

Using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) with high-angle annular-dark-field (HAADF) and annular-bright-field (ABF) techniques, the atomic-scale structures of the O3 and P2 phases NaxFe1/2Mn1/2O2 are investigated systematically. The Na, transition metals M (Fe and Mn) and O columns are well revealed and precisely a...

Room-temperature sodium storage technology has attracted more and more interest in the electrical energy storage field, particularly for large-scale applications in renewable solar and wind power as well as smart grid. However, the development of suitable anode materials remains a big challenging issue for long-life sodium-ion batteries. In this pr...