Preparation of high-efficiency anti-reflective oxide electrodes and their application in biomedical testing and thin-film lithium batteries

Nanomaterials hold great potential in the development of lithium-ion microbatteries and could assist in developing ever smaller and more reliable power sources to facilitate 21st Century life. Professor Kuan-Jiuh Lin is based in the Department of Chemistry, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan, and runs the Interfacial Optical-Electronic (IOE) Lab. He and his team leader Dr Wen-Yin Ko are working to address gaps in nanotechnology, including how to conquer the strong interfacial coupling between the porous semiconductor membrane and the electro-plasmon metal-surface film. Their research is expected to have broad applications across electronics and optoelectronics. In a recent project, the researchers are working to develop more efficient lithium-ion microbatteries (micro-LIBs) using active nanostructured anode materials such as carbon nanomaterials composed of porous carbon, graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The researchers have developed a lightweight and high-rate CNT-based anode system that holds great potential for fast-charging batteries. The team has also created metal-doped MnO2 nanowalls with inter-networked vertically-oriented three-dimensional (3D) porous frameworks directly onto a AgCNT modified current collector, resulting in a superior performance anode material for LIBs. The researchers also created a novel 3D porous scaffold anode material of silicon–porphyrin pearl-chain-like nanowires which was placed onto the surface of a bundled titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanowire. In a world first, Lin and the team were able to achieve dial functionalities of antireflective and electrochemical properties-based anatase TiO2 nanowire devices with a high-porosity cross-linked geometry directly grown onto transparent conductive glass.