Energy material I
Self-assembled copolymer such as block copolymer has attracted considerable attention for many decades because it can yield ordered structures in a wide range of morphologies, including spheres, cylinders, bi-continuous structures, lamellae, vesicles, and many other complex or hierarchical assemblies. These aggregates provide potential or practical applications in many fields. Doble comb copolymers are macromolecules of two or more different chemical chains in which a backbone chain has multiple branches formed from macromolecular chains with a chemical composition different from that of the backbone. The covalent bonds are randomly distributed along the backbone chain and are located at the end of the grafted branch. Unlike block copolymers, the double comb copolymer can be synthesized easier and less expensive: any macromolecular compound and almost any comonomer can be involved in a grafting process.
Energy material II
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) based on metal ions and organic ligands have been regarded as promising candidates for catalysis, optical, electrochemical sensors, CO2 capture and energy conversion due to their diverse structural topologies, tunable functionalities, and thermochemical stability. However, the development of most reported MOFs has focused on the microporous structures (2 nm), which are limited with respect to mass transport and molecular diffusion. Therefore, significant efforts have recently been devoted to the preparation of mesoporous (2~50 nm) MOFs to overcome such shortcomings. One strategy is to expand the organic ligand templates in microporous MOF structures. However, the characteristics of mesoporous MOFs prepared from long organic ligand templates are undesirable for various applications due to less chemical and physical stability, and reduced surface area. Another approach is to use soft templates, such as block copolymers, which are traditionally used as structure-directing agents for mesoporous metal oxides. However, these MOFs possess a less ordered mesoporous structure, requiring appropriate modifications to overcome this critical problem. Accordingly, this inspired us to research alternative ways to introduce novel templates such as double comb copolymer and synthetic steps that can lead to mesoporous MOF structures with high surface area and excellent stability.
With their large color tunability spanning from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared, perovskite quantum dots are a relatively new type of light emitter with high emission quantum yields. Nonetheless, significant obstacles still stand in the way of the continued development of perovskite quantum dot-based optoelectronics, including low material stability under ambient conditions and a limited operational lifetime under external stressors like illumination or an electrical field. Our group has recently suggested some fascinating research in which they used a mesoporous metal-organic framework (MOF) to stabilize the emission characteristics of perovskite quantum dots. The resulting structures are bright light emitters that have enabled a variety of energy conversion and storage applications.
