Tailoring the Structure of Carbon Nanomaterials toward High-End Energy Applications

Carbon nanomaterials are perceived to be ideally suited candidates for high-end energy applications, owing to their unparalleled advantages including superior electric and thermal conductivity, excellent mechanical properties, and high specific surface areas. It has been demonstrated through several research contributions that the electrochemical performance of carbon nanomaterials significantly depends upon their versatile electronic structures and microstructures. These can be precisely tailored by rational defect engineering, heteroatom doping, heterostructure coupling, and pore fabrication, which largely affect the intrinsic nature of active sites and facilitate the ion/electron transfer. Herein, the recent progress in tailoring carbon nanostructures toward high-end electrocatalysis and supercapacitor applications is summarized, with an emphasis on synthesis strategies, advanced characterizations, and specific elucidation of structure-performance relationship. The challenges and opportunities for the rational design and detection of variously tailored carbon nanomaterials that can further improve the fundamental understanding and practical applications in the field of energy storage and conversion are also discussed.