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Aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) offer a promising approach for electrical energy storage, combining cost-effectiveness and enhanced thermal safety. However, the cathode material, vanadium oxide, while known for its excellent theoretical specific capacity, faces a challenge in terms of its poor electronic conductance. In this study, we present a novel strategy to address this limitation by constructing the V 5 O 12 ·6H 2 O/V 6 O 13 /CNT (VOH/CNT) nanocomposite, resulting in significantly improved electrochemical performance. This nanocomposite was synthesized through a facile solvothermal method, yielding a unique floral spherical structure featuring a central cluster and multiple smaller groupings. The integration of CNTs into the composite significantly enhanced its electronic conductance, effectively mitigating the electronic conductance issue associated with vanadium oxide. Moreover, the composite retains crystalline water within its structure, playing a crucial role in providing a favorable ion-conductive pathway. Consequently, the VOH/CNT nanocomposite exhibits an impressive reversible capacity of 201 mA h g -1 at 50 mA g -1 , surpassing that of VOH (116 mA h g -1 ). Remarkably, even at a high current density, the VOH/CNT nanocomposite demonstrates an exceptional capacity retention, maintaining a capacity of 150 mA h g -1 over 500 cycles at 1 A g -1 . Its outstanding electrochemical performance can be attributed to its distinctive structural arrangement, the conductive network facilitated by CNTs, and the introduced crystalline water component.

Ag-doped ZnO nanorods growth on a PET-graphene substrate (Ag-ZnO/PET-GR) with different Ag-doped content were synthesized by low-temperature ion-sputtering-assisted hydrothermal synthesis method. The phase composition, morphologies of ZnO, and electrical properties were analyzed. Ag-doping affects the initially perpendicular growth of ZnO nanorods, resulting in oblique growth of ZnO nanorods becoming more obvious as the Ag-doped content increases, and the diameter of the nanorods decreasing gradually. The width of the forbidden band gap of the ZnO films decreases with increasing Ag-doped content. For the Ag-ZnO/PET-GR composite structure, the Ag-ZnO thin film with 5% Ag-doped content has the largest carrier concentration (8.1 × 10 18 cm -3 ), the highest mobility (67 cm 2 · V -1 · s -1 ), a small resistivity (0.09 Ω·cm), and impressive electrical properties., Competing Interests: YF was employed by company Chengdu Hongke Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ai, Fan, Wang, Zou, Bao, Deng, Zhao, Li, Kou, Feng and Li.)

The construction of nanoporous structure combined with the optimization of electronic structure toward electrocatalysts could be a promising and effective approach to boosting their catalytic performance. Herein, we rationally synthesized a novel Ni 3+ -doped ultrathin NiZn layered double hydroxide nanomesh supported on nickel foam (Ni(ii,iii)Zn-LDH/NF-nm) by a facile one-step methanol-assisted hydrothermal method. Results show that methanol can not only trigger the generation of ultrathin nanomesh structure, but adjust portion of Ni 2+ to Ni 3+ and thus to result in the Ni 3+ -doped NiZn-LDH nanomesh material. The nanoporous feature endows Ni(ii,iii)Zn-LDH/NF-nm with abundant exposed catalytic active sites and fast mass transfer for alkaline water electrolysis. More importantly, the Ni 3+ doping can facilitate the available formation of highly active NiOOH phase on the surface for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), accompanied by increased oxygen vacancies that can greatly enhance the electronic conductivity, leading to the improved intrinsic activity and the accelerated electrocatalytic OER reaction kinetics. As expected, the as-prepared Ni(ii,iii)Zn-LDH/NF-nm has relatively low overpotentials of 320 and 370 mV to drive large current densities of 100 and 500 mA cm -2 , respectively, and a small Tafel slope of 63.9 mV dec -1 , extremely superior to RuO 2 /NF and NiZn-LDH/NF-ns counterpart. Meanwhile, the electrolyzer assembled for overall water splitting by Ni(ii,iii)Zn-LDH/NF-nm yields the outstanding catalytic activity and stability. This work highlights a feasible strategy to design and develop high-efficiency water splitting electrocatalysts via engineering on composition and nanostructure.

Bridging S22- moieties have been demonstrated to be highly active sites existing in metal polysulfides for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), thus the incorporation of high-density bridging S22- into a Ni3S2 material to improve its electrocatalytic HER performance is highly desirable and challenging. Herein, we report a novel Ni3S2 nanorod array decorated with (020)-oriented VS4 nanocrystals grown on nickel foam (Shig-NS-rod/NF) via a simple and facile solvothermal method. Results show that the in situ incorporation of VS4 not only triggers the formation of such a nanorod array structure, but also contributes to the uniform grafting of high-density and high catalytically active bridging S22- sites on the interface between Ni3S2 and VS4 for enhanced HER activity, and also promotes the absorption ability of OH- radicals and thus accelerates the HER Volmer step in alkaline media. As expected, the resultant Shig-NS-rod/NF material exhibits impressive catalytic performance toward the HER, with a much lower overpotential of 137 mV at 10 mA cm-2 and a long-term durability for at least 22 h, and is superior to Ni3S2 nanorod arrays with low-density bridging S22- (Slow-NS-rod/NF) and NS-film/NF counterparts (without VS4), even outperforming the NF-supported 20% Pt/C at a large current density of over 120 mA cm-2. Our findings put forward fresh insight into the rational design of highly efficient electrocatalysts toward the HER for green hydrogen fuel production.