Mineral-Inspired Materials: Synthetic Phosphate Analogues for Battery Applications

Vanadium-based nanostructure materials for secondary lithium battery applications.

Vanadium-based materials, such as V2O5, LiV3O8, VO2(B) and Li3V2(PO4)3 are compounds that share the characteristic of intercalation chemistry. Their layered or open frameworks allow facile ion movement through the interspaces, making them promising cathodes for LIB applications. To bypass bottlenecks occurring in the electrochemical performances of vanadium-based cathodes that derive from their...

Designing Bio-Inspired Composite Materials for Medical Applications

Composite materials are multi-phased combinations of two or several components, which acquire new characteristic properties that the individual constituents, by themselves, cannot obtain. A composite material typically consists of a certain matrix containing one or more fillers which can be made up of particles, sheets or fibers. When at least one of these phases has dimensions less than 100 nm...

Opportunities and challenges for fi rst-principles materials design and applications to Li battery materials

The idea of fi rst-principles methods is to determine the properties of materials by solving the basic equations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. With such an approach, one can, in principle, predict the behavior of novel materials without the need to synthesize them and create a virtual design laboratory. By showing several examples of new electrode materials that have been comp...

Mechanics of electrode materials in lithium battery applications

Hydrogels from Amorphous Calcium Carbonate and Polyacrylic Acid: Bio-Inspired Materials for "Mineral Plastics".

Given increasing environmental issues due to the large usage of non-biodegradable plastics based on petroleum, new plastic materials, which are economic, environmentally friendly, and recyclable are in high demand. One feasible strategy is the bio-inspired synthesis of mineral-based hybrid materials. Herein we report a facile route for an amorphous CaCO3 (ACC)-based hydrogel consisting of very ...