Controlled fabrication of superelastic 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges and metal composites

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The metallized materials composed of nanostructured catalysts and carriers have broad technological application in wide areas ranging from catalysis and electrical devices to bioengineering. However, the catalytic activity and usage life of current metallized materials cannot simultaneously satisfy the urgent demands for high-performance catalysts in environmental and energy fields. Recently, the Sino-German researchers have prepared the metallized ceramic nanofibres with certain catalytic activity, however the stability and uniformity of the metals cannot meet the requirements of practical applications. Therefore, this project will focus on the controllable fabrication of metallized 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges and their applications. The research work of this project falls into three aspects. Firstly, the approaches for fabricating 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges with controllable structure should be developed. Then, the strategy for loading metals uniformly and stably on the surface of 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges should be investigated. Finally, we will demonstrate the relevance between the structure of metallized 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges and their application performance. As a result, the metallized 3D ceramic nanofibrous sponges with porosity > 95%, elastic deformation > 60%, loading amount of metals > 20 mg g-1 should be obtained, and their practical applications in various fields such as catalysis and methanol fuel cell electrodes will be explored. The outcome of this project will be fundamental knowledge of a new class of nanocomposite materials with high relevance to practical applications. This outcome will be possible only by the close collaboration of the Yu and Greiner group who have excellent and synergistic expertise in the field and documented cooperation in the past.