Low-Temperature, Universal Synthetic Route for Mesoporous Metal Oxides by Exploiting Synergistic Effect of Thermal...

Mesoporous metal oxides exhibit excellent physicochemical properties and are widely used in various fields, including energy storage/conversion, catalysis, and sensors. Although several soft-template approaches are reported, high-temperature calcination for both metal oxide formation and template removal is necessary, which limits direct synthesis on a plastic substrate for flexible devices. Here, a universal synthetic approach that combines thermal activation and oxygen plasma to synthesize diverse mesoporous metal oxides (V₂O₅, V₆O₁₃, TiO₂, Nb₂O₅, WO_3, and MoO₃) at low temperatures (150-200 °C), which can be applicable to a flexible polymeric substrate is introduced. As a demonstration, a flexible micro-supercapacitor is fabricated by directly synthesizing mesoporous V₂O₅ on an indium-tin oxide-coated colorless polyimide film. The energy storage performance is well maintained under severe bending conditions.