Abstract
A new-type of Cu foil, which is composed of free-standing rolled copper nanowires (CuNWs) is developed as current collector in lithium-ion battery. Ultrathin (1.5 m) and ultralight (1.2 mg cm-2) CuNW foil is fabricated by rolling CuNW fabric prepared by drop-casting, while Cu foil made by traditional ways of rolling-annealing and electrodepositing cannot be made (the most common one is around ~ 10 m and 9 mg cm-2 for lithium battery). The graphite-CuNW foil anode exhibit excellent electrochemical performances while assembled onto lithium batteries. The anodes has a high capacity of 363 mA h g-1 after cycled 60 times, close to the theoretical value (372 mA h g-1), and maintain a capacity of 300 mA h g-1 even at high weight graphite loaded (15.7 mg cm-2 and 5 mA h) on CuNW foil and 81% of capacity retention at 3 C shows good rate capability. In full cell examination, high cycling stability is proved by an 83.6 % of capacity retention of after 600 cycles of charge/discharge at 0.6 C. All these performance is comparable to commercial lithium battery. The commercialized potential has been proved by a fabrication of large-area CuNW foil and application in pouch-type full batteries with various large capacity output. For example, The pouch batteries with 47 and 235 cm2 of CuNW foils, which can output 140 and 700 mA h of capacity (~3 mA h cm-2 of areal capacity) respectively, and successfully powered various electronic devices needing different requirement, such as 120 light-emitting-diode (LED) array (high power), smart phone (high energy), cordless, screwdriver (both high power and energy) and drone (light, high power and energy). Batteries with CuNW foil as current collector have significant improvement in terms of mass, areal capacity and energy density, which are 62%, 13.7% and 21.1% respectively, compared to 10 m Cu foil, making them a promising current collector in high energy density and low weight lithium-ion battery. Recently, copper nanomaterials were wildly applied in the research of Copper(I)-Catalyzed Azide − Alkyne Cycloaddition (CuAAC). However, most of catalysts were Cu nanoparticles, supported Cu nanoparticles and nanoporous metallic Cu, Cu nanowires is still unusual. Firstly, we synthesized the uniform Cu nanowires by colloidal route. The Cu nanowires were fabricated to a porous Cu nanowires fabric and applied as a heterogeneous catalyst in the synthesis of 1,2,3-triazole. The light-to-heat conversion efficiency can be increased by enhanced absorption of nanowires with a multiple scattering of laser beam in the internal structure of the porous Cu nanowires fabric. Combined the two characteristics, the Cu nanowire fabric can simultaneously be a catalyst and a heating device under an 808 nm laser irradiation. According to the experiment, the effect of temperature elevation is obviously higher the Cu foil. In the catalytic test, approximately 97% conversion in synthesizing the 1-Benzyl-4-phenyl-1H-1,2,3-triazole by using the Cu nanowires fabric as a catalyst. This result shows the excellent catalytic performance of Cu nanowires fabric.