Hollow multi-shelled structures for energy conversion and storage applications

Abstract

The shortage of fossil fuels and the issue of environmental pollution have drawn more attention towards sustainable and clean energy. In order to efficiently convert or store clean energy, suitable materials with excellent performance are highly required. Materials with hollow multi-shelled structures (HoMSs) have drawn extensive attention recently due to their advantages benefiting from their unique structures, making them promising candidates for energy conversion and storage applications. Besides structure, the composition is another important factor that affects the properties of materials, and relies on more precise control of the synthesis. More attention on the composition control of HoMSs should be paid for different energy conversion and storage applications, to better improve their performance. In this review, we have summarized recent research studies on HoMSs for energy conversion and storage fields, including synthesis and applications. General methods including the hard template method, soft template method and template-free method to synthesize HoMSs are reviewed initially. The following section covers various compositional types of HoMSs including A_xB_y, A_xB_y–C_xD_y, A_xB_y@C_xD_y, and A_xB_yO_z types, and other types. Afterwards, the promising energy conversion and storage applications of HoMSs have been reviewed, such as dye-sensitized solar cells, rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, catalysis, and so on. Finally, a summary and outlook section is provided. We hope that this review will provide useful information for precise control of both structures and compositions of HoMSs to achieve enhanced properties for energy conversion and storage applications.