A Highly Compressible, Elastic, and Air‐Dryable Metallic Aerogels via Magnetic Field‐Assisted Synthesis

Metallic aerogels emerge as a group of materials for various applications since they exhibit the merits of both metal and aerogel. However, their performance characteristics are largely depreciated by the poor compressibility, elasticity, and complicated preparation process. Herein, a highly compres...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAdvanced functional materials Vol. 32; no. 43
Main Authors Pan, Weisheng, Liang, Caiwu, Sui, Yiming, Wang, Juan, Liu, Peng, Zou, Peichao, Guo, Zhenbin, Wang, Fangcheng, Ren, Xi, Yang, Cheng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.10.2022
Subjects
Aerogels
air‐dryable
anisotropic structures
Cold junctions
Cold welding
Compressibility
Electrical junctions
Electrical resistivity
Energy storage
Fatigue strength
highly compressible
Lamellar structure
Materials science
metallic aerogels
Nanowires
nickel nanowires
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Summary:Metallic aerogels emerge as a group of materials for various applications since they exhibit the merits of both metal and aerogel. However, their performance characteristics are largely depreciated by the poor compressibility, elasticity, and complicated preparation process. Herein, a highly compressible and air‐dryable nickel nanowire aerogel (NNWA) is prepared via a facile magnetic‐field‐assisted gelation strategy. Its unique anisotropic lamellar structure and abundant cold‐welded junctions of intertwined nanowires enable superior electric conductivity and compression fatigue resistance. Such a free‐standing NNWA featured with ultralow density (20 mg cm−3) can be directly used as electrode scaffolds for energy storage and electrocatalysis purposes even at high mass loading (e.g., 10 mg cm−2) and large current density (e.g., 1 A cm−2) with superior performance. This method represents a general strategy for producing metallic aerogels with excellent comprehensive performance and mass‐production capability, providing a versatile platform for advanced applications. Metallic aerogels, combining the merits of metal and aerogel characteristics, have aroused extensive attention in recent years. An air‐dryable nickel nanowire aerogel with anisotropic structure is reported, which has high compressibility and electric conductivity, making it capable in many other important fields as a versatile platform.
ISSN:1616-301X
1616-3028
DOI:10.1002/adfm.202204166