Hongmei Wei

Facile synthesis of three-dimensional NiCo2O4 with different morphology for supercapacitors

Three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical NiCo2O4 with tremella-like, flower-like, urchin-like and pine-needle-like structures has been prepared through a facile hydrothermal method. The key roles of the alkali source and NH4F in the formation of these nanostructures have been investigated. When applied to supercapacitors as an electrode material, the urchin-like NiCo2O4 sample exhibits the optimal electrochemical performance among all the four samples, demonstrating its promising application potential for supercapacitors. Such excellent performance is attributed to the unique mesoporous structure of the superfine nanoneedle-assembled urchin-like NiCo2O4 with large specific surface area. This investigation about morphology control of NiCo2O4 electrode materials and the relationship between the morphologies and corresponding electrochemical performances also provides a reference for the rational design and synthesis of electrode materials with desirable morphology for high performance supercapacitor applications.

Facile synthesis of different 3D bismuth oxychloride hierarchitectures and their visible-light photocatalytic properties

Two different three-dimensional BiOCl samples were synthesized via a facile solvothermal process without using any template or surfactant. The self-assembly porous structures of BiOCl could be simply tuned by adding NaOH aqueous solution. Since the as-obtained samples had different morphologies, they shared distinct values of Brunauer–Emmett–Teller specific surface areas, which resulted in a big difference on the dye adsorption rate. In this work, it was verified that the morphologies of photocatalysts had a significant effect on their photocatalytic activities. Moreover, it also developed a simple method to tune the morphologies of photocatalysts to achieve high photocatalytic activities.