Team

Research interests

• Synthesis of nanostructured materials via electroless plating and/or electrodeposition
• Self-supported nanostructured architectures as electrodes for energy storage and sensing applications

Motivation

The performance of catalyst electrodes strongly depends on the electrode architecture which in turn has a great effect on different material characteristics such as surface area, robustness and density of active sites. Nano network architectures combining advantages such as high porosity and 3D charge transfer through the fully interconnected network allow the realization of larger surface areas, which represents a pivotal property in electrochemical applications, paving the way for tailoring of a new generation of electrode materials with enhanced performance for supercapacitors, batteries and electrochemical sensors.

For this purpose, a new catalyst design based on self-supported nickel nanotube networks loaded with different active materials are synthesized via scalable approaches, namely templating with commercial track-etched membranes, electroless plating, and electrodeposition. Such catalyst architectures serve as a binder-free, robust electrodes for different electrochemical applications (supercapacitors and sensors).