Yanan Chen's Lab
Selected Publications
HT technology
Nanoparticles hosted in conductive matrices are ubiquitous in electrochemical energy
storage, catalysis and energetic devices. However, agglomeration and surface oxidation
remain as two major challenges towards their ultimate utility, especially for highly reactive
materials. Here we report uniformly distributed nanoparticles with diameters around 10 nm
can be self-assembled within a reduced graphene oxide matrix in 10 ms. Microsized particles
in reduced graphene oxide are Joule heated to high temperature (B1,700 K) and rapidly
quenched to preserve the resultant nano-architecture. A possible formation mechanism is
that microsized particles melt under high temperature, are separated by defects in reduced
graphene oxide and self-assemble into nanoparticles on cooling. The ultra-fast manufacturing
approach can be applied to a wide range of materials, including aluminium, silicon, tin and so
on. One unique application of this technique is the stabilization of aluminium nanoparticles in
reduced graphene oxide film, which we demonstrate to have excellent performance as a
switchable energetic material.