High-surface-area nanoporous materials
Nanotecture is at the forefront of research and development of nanoporous materials, delivering high-surface-area nanoporous materials which have wide-ranging applications in the design and production of high performance batteries and supercapacitors.
The technology, which is based on the technique of liquid crystal templating discovered at the University of Southampton, exploits the inherent behaviour of surfactants in solution to align themselves in highly regular geometric structures resembling a honeycomb. With their defined, ordered porosity, these liquid crystal honeycomb structures act as an ideal temporary framework for the alignment and deposition of other materials such as metal salts.
When the surfactant framework is subsequently removed, the remaining material displays the same defined ordered porosity as the original template, i.e. it has become ‘nanoporous’, consisting of micron-sized particles with pores penetrating all the way through the particles.
The most important consequence and benefit of nano-porosity is the considerably increased surface area available for reactions – hundreds of times greater compared to the original, non-porous material.
At the same time, the very much shorter solid state diffusion path greatly speeds up the rate of charging and discharging. These factors combine to bring about a huge increase in the reaction efficiency of a given material, and are the basis for the great success of Nanotecture’s nanoporous materials in delivering extremely efficient storage devices for electrical energy.
Tailoring the technology
Nanotecture has further innovated and refined the original liquid crystal templating technique to control and manipulate parameters such as pore size, surface area, temperature and cycle-life performance. This means that nanoporous materials can be tailored with defined characteristics for specific applications.
Moreover, the technology supports the production of nanoporous materials in different forms - thin-film, monolithic, powder, discrete particles – providing great flexibility for the implementation of different applications, ranging from small thin film sensors and microelectrodes to large-scale supercapacitors.