Feng Frank Gong

Southeast University (China) | SEU · School of Energy and Environment

Ammonia, with its high hydrogen storage density of 17.7 wt.% (mass fraction), cleanliness, efficiency, and renewability, presents itself as a promising zero-carbon fuel. However, the traditional Haber–Bosch (H–B) process for ammonia synthesis necessitates high temperature and pressure, resulting in over 420 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions...

Renewable electricity‐powered nitrate/carbon dioxide co‐reduction reaction toward urea production paves an attractive alternative to industrial urea processes and offers a clean on‐site approach to closing the global nitrogen cycle. However, its large‐scale implantation is severely impeded by challenging C–N coupling and requires electrocatalysts w...

With the development of renewable energy technologies, the recovery and utilization of low-grade energy based on hydroelectric effect have drawn much attention owing to its environmental friendliness. Herein, a novel hydroelectric generator utilizing sodium alginate-graphene oxide (SA-GO) fibers is proposed, which is ecofriendly and low-cost. These...

Ammonia is an efficient and clean hydrogen carrier that promises to tackle the increasing energy and environmental problems. However, more than 90% of ammonia is produced by the Haber–Bosch process, and its enormous energy consumption and CO2 emissions require the development of novel alternatives. Chemical looping technology can decouple the one‐s...

Developing efficient electrocatalysts for converting dinitrogen to ammonia through electrocatalysis is of significance to the decentralized ammonia production. Here, through high-throughput density functional theory calculations, we demonstrated that the interfacial modulation of hexagonal boron nitride/graphene (hBN-graphene) could sufficiently im...

Owing to the excellent thermal properties of graphene, silicon carbide (SiC) combined with graphene is expected to obtain more outstanding thermal performance and structural stability at high temperatures. Herein, the thermal conductivity of graphene/SiC heterostructures (GS-Hs) with different structures and atomic orientations was calculated throu...

Owing to the requirement of higher efficiency, safety reliability and lower maintenance cost for nuclear reactors, the performance improvement of zirconium (Zr) alloy cladding coating materials is becoming increasingly significant. Graphene, with its inherent properties like ultrahigh thermal conductivity, excellent chemical stability, and super-hy...

Ammonia is a prospective fuel for hydrogen storage and production, but its application is limited by the high cost of the catalysts (Ru, etc.) to decompose NH3. Decomposing ammonia using non-precious Ni as catalysts can therefore improve its prospects to produce hydrogen. This work proposes several Ni/MgAl2O4 with the support properties tuned and i...

Exhaust steam contains abundant energy, yet there is limited engineering attempt devoted to harvesting such energy, inducing tremendous energy loss. Here, we present a biomimetic actuator for energy harvesting from exhaust steam. This biomimetic actuator consists of a polyethylene oxide (PEO) layer for hydroscopic actuation and a polyvinylidene flu...

Electrochemical reduction reaction of nitric oxide (NORR) to ammonia has been considered as a promising alternative to capturing and utilizing NO emitted from thermal-power plants. Various metal-containing catalysts have been proved to possess efficient catalytic activities for NORR, yet the attempt on metal-free NORR catalysts is quite limited. He...

Recycling Polymeric Solid Wastes In article number 2102459, Rui Xiao, Kevin Wu, Yong Sik Ok and co-workers develop polypyrrole-coated melamine foam from polymeric solid wastes for solar-driven steam generation, organic distillation and oil spillage absorption. Benefiting from the in-situ coating and interfacial modulation by polypyrrole, the compos...

Ammonia (NH3) has been regarded as an attractive energy source for hydrogen production via catalytic decomposition, especially over non-noble metal catalysts. Owing to the decent performance and low cost, nickel (Ni) based catalysts have been widely studied for catalytic decomposition of NH3 where the decomposition rates, can be further tailored by...

Conventional approaches (e.g., pyrolysis) for managing waste polymer foams typically require highly technical skills and consume large amounts of energy resources. This paper presents an ultrafacile, cost‐effective, and highly efficient alternative method for recycling waste packaging and cleaning foam (e.g., polymelamine–formaldehyde foam). The de...

Transition metal vanadates (TMVs) (TM= Co, Zn, Ni, Cu, Mn, Fe, etc) have displayed outstanding electrochemical performances in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with intriguingly rich crystal structures, redox reactions and phase transitions. In nature, the ample valence of transition metal endows impressive chemical and structural multiplicity for mixe...

Vanadates have received booming attention recently as promising materials for extensive electrochemical devices such as batteries and electrocatalysis. However, the enormous difficulties of achieving pure‐phase transition metal vanadates, especially for nickel‐based, hinder their exploitations. Herein, for the first time, by controlling the amount...

“Less cobalt” is an unstoppable trend especially in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). In this study, by doping Mn for cobalt vanadate through facile hydrothermal reaction, the novel mixed Co/Mn vanadates are obtained balancing performance and cost. The 67%Mn-based vanadates, of optimized element ratio, achieve a high initial discharge capacity of 1193...

Low-grade energy harvesting from the ambient environment promises to relieve the energy shortage in the remote regions or emergency needs. The reported materials employed for low-grade energy harvesting requires costly raw materials and highly technical skills, hindering the applications in isolated regions or after natural disasters. Herein, we re...

An unprecedentedly facile, cheap, green, and scalable approach to fabricate cobalt oxides nanoparticles has been developed in this work. By directly annealing cobalt acetate tetrahydrate, Co3O4 with a trace amount of CoO was formed at 300 ℃ in the air. A rapid morphological change (< 30 min) from chunk to nanoparticles is elucidated. When applied a...

This work primarily presents a systematic study of the large-scale hydrothermal synthesis of β-Mn2V2O7 interconnected nanospheres without templates. An optimal combination of hydrothermal/annealing parameters is identified for the pure phase, which exhibits excellent cycling performance of 760 mAh/g at 0.5 A/g over 120 cycles and rate capability of...

Harvesting water and energy from ambient environment promises to relieve the worldwide fresh-water scarcity and energy shortage. The fabrication of well-designed materials for atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) requires highly-technical skills, hampering practical applications in isolated regions or after natural disasters. Herein, we report an eff...

Nanocomposites with Carbon-based nanofillers (e.g., carbon nanotubes, graphene sheets and nanoribbons etc.) form a class of extremely promising materials for thermal applications. In addition to exceptional material properties, the thermal conductivity of the carbon-based nanofillers can be higher than any other known material, suggesting the possi...

Utilizing the clean and renewable solar energy to generate steam for wastewater purification or seawater desalination is a promising solution to the worldwide scarcity of fresh water. Herein, we report a highly-efficient, eco-friendly and cost-effective solar steam generator based on ball-milling graphite and cellulose fiber from waste paper. Ball-...

Multiphase carbon-based nanocomposites have aroused extensive attention because of their excellent functionality, especially in thermal management applications. Meantime, nanocomposites are required to obtain better properties to meet the increasingly serious challenges. Some theories and models have been developed to investigate the thermal transp...

Alloying negative electrodes possessing higher capacity and rate performance stand at the leading edge of pursuing faster and highly reversible lithium storage. However, the commercialization of alloying materials for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) is still limited by unmanageable volume expansion causing rapid capacity decay and complex production p...

Achieving high energy density, power density and cycling performance is a great challenge for lithium-ion batteries （LIBs） anodes. To obtain favorable electrochemical properties, it is an effective approach for designing composite nanomaterials with good stability, large specific surface area. In this work, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) MOF-deriv...

Among the candidates to the next-generation energy storage system (EES), lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries represent an attractive option due to high theoretical specific energy. Intensively studied carbon/sulfur (C/S) composite cathodes are the key elements to determine the performance of Li–S batteries. Herein, a novel in-situ nitrogen-doped porous...

Solar steam generation can be a practical and sustainable technology for wastewater purification and seawater desalination. However, both the inefficient utilization of solar energy and high complicity/cost of current solar steam generators hinder the scalable application of this technique. Herein, we demonstrate a facile, scalable and low-cost app...

It is of great importance to search for efficient and stable metal-free catalysts toward electrochemical N2-to-NH3 conversion. In this communication, a chemically oxidized carbon nanotube material (O-CNT) is verified as an active electrocatalyst for the N2 reduction reaction under ambient conditions. In 0.1 M LiClO4, O-CNT achieves a large NH3 yiel...

Currently, industrial-scale NH3 production almost relies on energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process from atmospheric N2 with large amount of CO2 emission, while low-cost and high-efficient catalysts are demanded for the N2 reduction reaction (NRR). In this study, Mn3O4 nanoparticles@reduced graphene oxide (Mn3O4@rGO) composite is reported as an effici...

The detrimental mechanical friction and wear during high-speed rotation are always challenging in industrial manufacturing. To solve this problem, an effective lubricant of graphene-oil nanofluid (GON) is developed in this work while the tribological and wear performances of GON on high-speed rotation are systematically investigated. Tests conducte...

Electrocatalytic N2 reduction as an alternative approach to the energy-intensive and large CO2-emitting Haber-Bosch process for NH3 synthesis under mild conditions has attracted extensive attention. Current research efforts for N2 reduction mainly focus on metal-based catalysts while metal-free alternatives can avoid the issue of metal ion release....

As an environmentally-friendly and sustainable approach, electrochemical N2 reduction has been expected to replace the energy-intensive and massive greenhouse gas emited Haber–Bosch process for artificial N2 fixation. However, it stillsuffers from severe challenge owing to N2 activiation, and thus requires efficient catalysts for N2 reduction react...

NH3 is a valuable chemical with a wide range of applications, but the conventional Haber–Bosch process for industrial‐scale NH3 production is highly energy‐intensive with serious greenhouse gas emission. Electrochemical reduction offers an environmentally benign and sustainable route to convert N2 to NH3 at ambient conditions, but its efficiency de...

Engineering the morphology and surface structure can be used to precisely and effectively manipulate the reactivity and durability of catalysts. Herein, we develop a novel “ad-sorption-calcination-reduction" strategy to synthesize spinel transitional metal oxides with a unique necklace-like multi-shelled hollow structure exploiting sacrificial temp...

Multiphase nanocomposites have drawn substantial attention due to their advanced functionality, including high thermal conductivity. Herein, theoretical models are developed based on modifications of the effective medium theory and then validated to predict the effective thermal conductivity (Keff) of three common multiphase nanocomposites: nanoshe...

Room‐temperature sodium‐ion batteries have attracted great attentions for large‐scale energy storage applications in renewable energy. However, exploring suitable anode materials with high reversible capacity and cyclic stability is still a challenge. The VS4, with parallel quasi‐1D chains structure of V⁴⁺(S2²⁻)2, which provides large interchain di...

There has been no report on the influence of film growth behavior on the dielectric properties of BST films alternately doped with K and Mg up to now, thereby 1%K and 1%Mg alternately doped Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (K/Mg-BST) films with various thicknesses were prepared by an improved sol-gel method, and their growth behaviors and dielectric properties were...

K and Mg codoped BST powders were prepared by a sol-gel method, and the effect of doped concentration on the dielectric performances was studied. For comparison, pure, Mg doped and K doped BST powders were studied. XRD shows all powders reveal complete diffraction peaks and ABO3 cubic perovskite polycrystalline structures. Compared to the pure BST...

A 1% Y and 1% Mn alternately doped nonstoichiometric (Ba0.6Sr0.4)0.8TiO3 (Y/Mn-BST) film was attempted to design and prepare by an improved sol-gel method on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates, and its ultralow dielectric loss with other dielectric properties was studied in this paper. Undoped, Y doped and Mn doped BST films were also compared. All films gro...

Effectively thermal conduction pathways are essential for the thermal conductivity of polymer-based composites. In this contribution, we proposed a facile and feasible strategy to improve the thermal conductivity of polymer composites through constructing a segregated structure and hybrid conductive network. Boron nitride (BN) and aluminium nitride...

This work placed an emphasis that the construction of segregated boron nitride (BN)/carbon nanotube (CNT) hybrid network brought an immense benefit to enhance the thermal conductivity (TC) of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) composites. The segregated composites ((CNT + BN)@PVDF) showed a high TC of 1.8 W/mK at the total filler fraction of 25 vol%,...

The conventional approach to improve the thermal conductivity (TC) of polymers by blindly adding inorganic fillers suffers from the limited TC enhancement (< 3.0 W/mK) with isotropic TC and poor mechanical performance. Here, highly anisotropic, thermally conductive, and mechanically strong boron nitride (BN)/ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene...

Self-assembled nano-honeycomb WS2 modified by graphene doping were prepared by improved one step hydrothermal method. In this hybrid structure, graphene plays a key role of transferring the morphology from the nanowire microporous spheres to graphene-supported nano-honeycomb plane structure, which has the larger the specific surface area and higher...

In the past four years, transition metal vanadates have received booming attention as anode materials for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to their outstanding specific capacities, decent cycling performance and superior rate properties. Among them, Co3V2O8 is the most reported species. However the cobalt is expensive, thus the replacement of cobal...

Room-temperature sodium-ion batteries have attracted great attentions for large-scale energy storage applications in renewable energy. However, exploring suitable anode materials with high reversible capacity and cyclic stability is still a challenge. The VS 4 , with parallel quasi-1D chains structure of V 4+ (S 2 2−) 2 , which provides large inter...

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal disulfides (TMDSs) have triggered worldwide research interest due to their weak interlayer van der Waals (vdW) interaction, low cost, chemical/thermal stability and excellent processability. Among them, MoS2 and WS2 are two typical chemicals widely investigated. Yet their individual poor conductivity and restac...

Graphene has been combined with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to ameliorate the poor cycling stability and rate performance of MoS2 in lithium ion battery (LIB), yet the underlying mechanisms remain less explored. Here, we develop multi-scale modeling to investigate the enhanced electrochemical and thermal transport properties of graphene/MoS2 hetero...

Cobalt vanadates have been demonstrated as superior anode candidates for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their unique advantages, such as superb specific capacity, low operating potential, and excellent cycling stability. Among the cobalt vanadates, Co3V2O8 manifests tremendous potential of commercialization because of their controllable part...

Thermal management in microelectronic devices has become a crucial issue as the devices are more and more integrated into micro-devices. Recently, free-standing graphene films (GFs) with outstanding thermal conductivity, superb mechanical strength, and low bulk density, have been regarded as promising materials for heat dissipation and for use as t...

As recently explored lithium ion batteries (LIBs)anode materials, transition metal vanadates have attracted much attention for their excellent electrochemical performance. In this work, we successfully synthesized solid Co3V2O8 microspheres (sCVO MSs) via a facile and controllable hydrothermal reaction, and the magical formation mechanismwas also r...

Graphene aerogels (GAs) have attracted extensive interest in diverse fields, owing to their ultrahigh surface area, low density and decent electrical conductivity. However, the undesirable thermal conductivity of GAs may limit their applications in energy storage devices. Here, we report a facile hydrothermal method to modulate both the electrical...

Transition metal vanadates have attracted much attention for high capacity anodes of lithium ion batteries (LIBs). However, they have obvious drawbacks (short cycle-lives and low rate performance) because of the intrinsically low electronic conductivity and serious volume variation during Li-ion desorption and insertion. In particular, pure Co3V2O8...

A graphene/silicon composite paper is considered as a promising anode material for flexible batteries. Herein, a highly conductive, flexible, self-supporting, and binder-free graphene/Si composite paper has been prepared via in situ iodine doping and simultaneous reduction of a graphene oxide/silicon composite slice with a solution of hydrohalic (H...

Si nanoparticle (Si-NP) composite anode with high rate and long cycle life is an attractive anode material for lithium-ion battery (LIB) in hybrid electric vehicle (HEV)/pure electric vehicle (PEV). In this work, a carbon nanotube (CNT)/reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/Si nanoparticle composite with alternated structure as Li-ion battery anode is prepa...

Mixed metal vanadate oxides are promising superior anode materials for lithium ion batteries due to their high specific capacities, improved cycling performance and excellent rate properties. In this work, we demonstrate a facile and controllable synthesis of solid Co3V2O8 micro-particles with different morphologies through a hydrothermal method. B...

Here we report computational results from an off-lattice Monte Carlo investigation of the effective thermal transport properties in multiphase biological systems containing carbon nanomaterials. A three-phase system that consists of a cell, healthy tissue and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was built in silico for this study. The CNTs were embedded in both...

Mn (2%, 5%, 8%)/Y (1%) alternately doped BST multilayer thin films have been prepared by a modified sol-gel method on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates. The effects of Mn doping contents on the structures and dielectric properties of the films are studied by XRD, XPS, FESEM, EDS, and C-V. Meanwhile, a graded preheating (GP) process is designed to modify the...

A mesoscopic model was developed using the off-lattice Monte Carlo (MC) method to investigate the thermal transport phenomena and limitations in carbon nanotube (CNT) multiphase polymer composites. The composites contained single-walled CNTs (SWNTs) and inorganic tungsten disulfide (WS2) nanoparticles in the poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) matrix....

A sandwich-like 2D-mesoporous-carbon/MoS2 -nanosheet heterostructure is fabricated for the first time. The hybrid structure is composed of three well-stacked monolayers: an ordered-mesoporous-carbon monolayer, a MoS2 monolayer, and a further ordered-mesoporous-carbon monolayer. This unique heterostructure exhibits excellent electrochemical performa...

Here, we present a review of recent developments for an off-lattice Monte Carlo approach used to investigate the thermal transport properties of multiphase composites with complex structure. The thermal energy was quantified by a large number of randomlymoving thermal walkers. Different modes of heat conduction were modeled in appropriate ways. The...

Aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) composites have attracted a lot of interest due to their superb mechanical and physical properties. This article presents a brief overview of the synthesis approaches of aligned CNT composites. The three major methods for fabricating aligned CNT fibers are first reviewed, including wet-spinning, dry-spinning and floati...

For barium strontium titanate (Ba0.6Ti0.4TiO3, BST) films used in tunable microwave devices, they must have excellent structural characteristics and outstanding combination of dielectric properties i.e., a low loss tangent over the range of operating direct current (DC) bias voltages, a moderate dielectric constant for impedance matching purpose, a...

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) tend to aggregate into bundles due to Van der Waals forces during the fabrication of the composite. A computational model using an off-lattice Monte Carlo method is developed to systematically investigate the effects of SWNT bundles, the number of SWNTs per bundle and the thermal boundary resistance (TBR) at t...

Here we report a novel interface tension-induced shrinkage approach to realize the synthesis of monodispersed asymmetrical mesoporous carbon nano-hemispheres. We demonstrate that the products exhibit very uniform hemispherical morphology (130 x 60 nm) and are full of ordered mesopores, endowing them high surface areas and uniform pore sizes. Moreov...

In this work, graphene aerogel (GA)–poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) composites are first developed by backfilling PMMA into the pores of the GAs, providing uniform distribution of multi-layer reduced graphene oxide (m-rGO) sheets in the PMMA matrix. Electrical, mechanical and thermal properties of the as-prepared GA–PMMA composites are investigat...

An Off-Lattice Monte Carlo model was developed to investigate effective thermal conductivities (Keff) and thermal transport limitations of polymer composites containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and inorganic nanoparticles. The simulation results agree with experimental data for poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) with inclusions of CNTs and tungsten dis...

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are promising heating agents in cancer photothermal therapy when under near infrared radiation, yet few efforts have been focused on the quantitative understanding of the photothermal energy conversion in biological systems. In this article, a mesoscopic study that takes into account SWNT morphologies (diamete...

An off-lattice Monte Carlo model was developed to study the heat transfer in three-phase systems containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) randomly orientated and distributed at the interface of another two media. Thermal energy was simulated by a large number of discrete thermal walkers with a random movement in the CNTs and a Brownian motion in the othe...

A theoretical model is developed that predicts the thermal characterization of multiscale wires using the pulse laser thermal relaxation technique. This into account anisotropic heat transfer and radiation heat lost to the surroundings. The simulation results have better agreement with the experimental results than previous models. Using the valida...

Laser thermal therapy selectively kills cancer cells without harming surrounding cells due to the high-energy absorbance of the functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However, the technique application is still very limited due to lack of experimental and computational works to understand how to kill cancer cells effectively and how the CNTs are h...