Bo Zheng, an associate professor of the College of Energy Engineering, published a paper titled Emerging Energy and Environmental Applications of Vertically-Oriented Graphenes in Chemical Society Reviews in the April issue of 2015. Chemical Society Reviews is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship reviews journal, publishing succinct and reader-friendly articles at the forefront of the chemical sciences and its impact factor hits an incredibly 30.425.
The paper is co-written by Prof. Cen Kefa of Zhejiang University, Prof. Junhong Cheng of the University of Wisconsin and Prof. Kostya Ostriko of Australia’s CISRO Materials Science and Engineering. The findings are based on cutting-edge inter-disciplinary research, including energy, nano materials and plasma chemistry.
Graphene nanosheets arranged perpendicularly to the substrate surface, i.e., vertically-oriented graphenes (VGs), have many unique morphological and structural features that can lead to exciting properties. Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition enables the growth of VGs on various substrates using gas, liquid, or solid precursors. Compared with conventional randomly-oriented graphenes, VGs’ vertical orientation on the substrate, non-agglomerated morphology, controlled inter-sheet connectivity, as well as sharp and exposed edges make them very promising for a variety of applications. The focus of this tutorial review is on plasma-enabled simple yet efficient synthesis of VGs and their properties that lead to emerging energy and environmental applications, ranging from energy storage, energy conversion, sensing, to green corona discharges for pollution control.