Li_xNa_2−xW₄O₁₃ nanosheet for scalable electrochromic device

Abstract

The printed electronics technology can be used to efficiently construct smart devices and is dependent on functional inks containing well-dispersed active materials. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are promising functional ink candidates due to their superior properties. However, the majority 2D materials can disperse well only in organic solvents or in surfactant-assisted water solutions, which limits their applications. Herein, we report a lithium (Li)-ion exchange method to improve the dispersity of the Na₂W₄O₁₃ nanosheets in pure water. The Li-ion-exchanged Na₂W₄O₁₃ (Li_xNa_2−xW₄O₁₃) nanosheets show highly stable dispersity in water with a zeta potential of −55 mV. Moreover, this aqueous ink can be sprayed on various substrates to obtain a uniform Li_xNa_2−xW₄O₁₃ nanosheet film, exhibiting an excellent electrochromic performance. A complementary electrochromic device containing a Li_xNa_2−xW₄O₁₃ nanosheet film as an electrochromic layer and Prussian white (PW) as an ion storage layer exhibits a large optical modulation of 75% at 700 nm, a fast switching response of less than 2 s, and outstanding cyclic stability. This Na₂W₄O₁₃-based aqueous ink exhibits considerable potential for fabricating large-scale and flexible electrochromic devices, which would meet the practical application requirements.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

printed electronics technology / two-dimensional material / ink / ion exchange / electrochromic device

References

[1] Baeg K J, Caironi M, Noh Y Y. Toward printed integrated circuits based on unipolar or ambipolar polymer semiconductors. Advanced Materials, 2013, 25(31): 4210–4244

[2] Perelaer J, Smith P J, Mager D, Soltman D, Volkman S K, Subramanian V, Korvink J G, Schubert U S. Printed electronics: the challenges involved in printing devices, interconnects, and contacts based on inorganic materials. Journal of Materials Chemistry, 2010, 20(39): 8446–8453

[3] Barrows A T, Pearson A J, Kwak C K, Dunbar A D F, Buckley A R, Lidzey D G. Efficient planar heterojunction mixed-halide perovskite solar cells deposited via spray-deposition. Energy & Environmental Science, 2014, 7(9): 2944–2950

[4] Scardaci V, Coull R, Lyons P E, Rickard D, Coleman J N. Spray deposition of highly transparent, low-resistance networks of silver nanowires over large areas. Small, 2011, 7(18): 2621–2628

[5] Sirringhaus H, Kawase T, Friend R H, Shimoda T, Inbasekaran M, Wu W, Woo E P. High-resolution inkjet printing of all-polymer transistor circuits. Science, 2000, 290(5499): 2123–2126

[6] van Osch T H J, Perelaer J, de Laat A W M, Schubert U S. Inkjet printing of narrow conductive tracks on untreated polymeric substrates. Advanced Materials, 2008, 20(2): 343–345

[7] Ding T, Liu K, Li J, Xue G, Chen Q, Huang L, Hu B, Zhou J. All-printed porous carbon film for electricity generation from evaporation-driven water flow. Advanced Functional Materials, 2017, 27(22): 1700551–1700555

[8] Fang Y S, Wu Z C, Li J, Jiang F Y, Zhang K, Zhang Y L, Zhou Y H, Zhou J, Hu B. High‐performance hazy silver nanowire transparent electrodes through diameter tailoring for semitransparent photovoltaics. Advanced Functional Materials, 2018, 28(9): 1705409–1705416

[9] Kamyshny A, Magdassi S. Conductive nanomaterials for printed electronics. Small, 2014, 10(17): 3515–3535

[10] Berggren M, Nilsson D, Robinson N D. Organic materials for printed electronics. Nature Materials, 2007, 6(1): 3–5

[11] Bonaccorso F, Bartolotta A, Coleman J N, Backes C. 2D-crystal-based functional inks. Advanced Materials, 2016, 28(29): 6136–6166

[12] Cai X, Luo Y, Liu B, Cheng H M. Preparation of 2D material dispersions and their applications. Chemical Society Reviews, 2018, 47(16): 6224–6266

[13] Xiao X, Song H, Lin S, Zhou Y, Zhan X, Hu Z, Zhang Q, Sun J, Yang B, Li T, Jiao L, Zhou J, Tang J, Gogotsi Y. Scalable salt-templated synthesis of two-dimensional transition metal oxides. Nature Communications, 2016, 7(1): 11296–11303

[14] Hu Z, Xiao X, Jin H, Li T, Chen M, Liang Z, Guo Z, Li J, Wan J, Huang L, Zhang Y, Feng G, Zhou J. Rapid mass production of two-dimensional metal oxides and hydroxides via the molten salts method. Nature Communications, 2017, 8(1): 15630–15638

[15] Zhao Y, Zhu K. Efficient planar perovskite solar cells based on 1.8 eV band gap CH₃NH₃PbI₂Br nanosheets via thermal decomposition. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2014, 136(35): 12241–12244

[16] Pospischil A, Furchi M M, Mueller T. Solar-energy conversion and light emission in an atomic monolayer p-n diode. Nature Nanotechnology, 2014, 9(4): 257–261

[17] Li T, Jin H, Liang Z, Huang L, Lu Y, Yu H, Hu Z, Wu J, Xia B Y, Feng G, Zhou J. Synthesis of single crystalline two-dimensional transition-metal phosphides via a salt-templating method. Nanoscale, 2018, 10(15): 6844–6849

[18] Chen Z, Song Y, Cai J, Zheng X, Han D, Wu Y, Zang Y, Niu S, Liu Y, Zhu J, Liu X, Wang G. Tailoring the d‐band centers enables Co₄N nanosheets to be highly active for hydrogen evolution catalysis. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2018, 57(18): 5076–5080

[19] Kelly A G, Hallam T, Backes C, Harvey A, Esmaeily A S, Godwin I, Coelho J, Nicolosi V, Lauth J, Kulkarni A, Kinge S, Siebbeles L D A, Duesberg G S, Coleman J N. All-printed thin-film transistors from networks of liquid-exfoliated nanosheets. Science, 2017, 356(6333): 69–73

[20] Withers F, Yang H, Britnell L, Rooney A P, Lewis E, Felten A, Woods C R, Sanchez Romaguera V, Georgiou T, Eckmann A, Kim Y J, Yeates S G, Haigh S J, Geim A K, Novoselov K S, Casiraghi C. Heterostructures produced from nanosheet-based inks. Nano Letters, 2014, 14(7): 3987–3992

[21] Zhang C J, Kremer M P, Seral-Ascaso A, Park S H, McEvoy N, Anasori B, Gogotsi Y, Nicolosi V. Stamping of flexible, coplanar micro‐supercapacitors using MXene inks. Advanced Functional Materials, 2018, 28(9): 1705506–1705515

[22] Bie Y Q, Grosso G, Heuck M, Furchi M M, Cao Y, Zheng J, Bunandar D, Navarro-Moratalla E, Zhou L, Efetov D K, Taniguchi T, Watanabe K, Kong J, Englund D, Jarillo-Herrero P. A MoTe₂-based light-emitting diode and photodetector for silicon photonic integrated circuits. Nature Nanotechnology, 2017, 12(12): 1124–1129

[23] Hernandez Y, Nicolosi V, Lotya M, Blighe F M, Sun Z, De S, McGovern I T, Holland B, Byrne M, Gun’Ko Y K, Boland J J, Niraj P, Duesberg G, Krishnamurthy S, Goodhue R, Hutchison J, Scardaci V, Ferrari A C, Coleman J N. High-yield production of graphene by liquid-phase exfoliation of graphite. Nature Nanotechnology, 2008, 3(9): 563–568

[24] Mashtalir O, Naguib M, Mochalin V N, Dall’Agnese Y, Heon M, Barsoum M W, Gogotsi Y. Intercalation and delamination of layered carbides and carbonitrides. Nature Communications, 2013, 4(1): 1716–1722

[25] Coleman J N, Lotya M, O’Neill A, Bergin S D, King P J, Khan U, Young K, Gaucher A, De S, Smith R J, Shvets I V, Arora S K, Stanton G, Kim H Y, Lee K, Kim G T, Duesberg G S, Hallam T, Boland J J, Wang J J, Donegan J F, Grunlan J C, Moriarty G, Shmeliov A, Nicholls R J, Perkins J M, Grieveson E M, Theuwissen K, McComb D W, Nellist P D, Nicolosi V. Two-dimensional nanosheets produced by liquid exfoliation of layered materials. Science, 2011, 331(6017): 568–571

[26] Mendoza-Sánchez B, Hanlon D, Coelho J, Brien S O, Pettersson H. An investigation of the energy storage properties of a 2D α-MoO₃-SWCNTs composite films. 2D Materials, 2016, 4(1): 015005–015012

[27] Lin S, Shih C J, Strano M S, Blankschtein D. Molecular insights into the surface morphology, layering structure, and aggregation kinetics of surfactant-stabilized graphene dispersions. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2011, 133(32): 12810–12823

[28] Wang J L, Lu Y R, Li H H, Liu J W, Yu S H. Large area co-assembly of nanowires for flexible transparent smart windows. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2017, 139(29): 9921–9926

[29] Cong S, Tian Y, Li Q, Zhao Z, Geng F. Single-crystalline tungsten oxide quantum dots for fast pseudocapacitor and electrochromic applications. Advanced Materials, 2014, 26(25): 4260–4267

[30] Shendage S S, Patil V L, Vanalakar S A, Patil S P, Harale N S, Bhosale J L, Kim J H, Patil P S. Sensitive and selective NO₂ gas sensor based on WO₃ nanoplates. Sensors and Actuators B, Chemical, 2017, 240: 426–433

[31] Sun S, Watanabe M, Wu J, An Q, Ishihara T. Ultrathin WO₃·0.33H₂O nanotubes for CO₂ photoreduction to Acetate with high selectivity. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2018, 140(20): 6474–6482

[32] Liang L, Li K, Xiao C, Fan S, Liu J, Zhang W, Xu W, Tong W, Liao J, Zhou Y, Ye B, Xie Y. Vacancy associates-rich ultrathin nanosheets for high performance and flexible nonvolatile memory device. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2015, 137(8): 3102–3108

[33] Wang J, Zhang L, Yu L, Jiao Z, Xie H, Lou X W, Sun X W. A bi-functional device for self-powered electrochromic window and self-rechargeable transparent battery applications. Nature Communications, 2014, 5(1): 4921–4927

[34] Kresse G, Furthmüller J. Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set. Physical Review B, 1996, 54(16): 11169–11186

[35] Kresse G, Furthmüller J. Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set. Computational Materials Science, 1996, 6(1): 15–50

[36] Blöchl P E. Projector augmented-wave method. Physical Review B, 1994, 50(24): 17953–17979

[37] Perdew J P, Burke K, Ernzerhof M. Generialized gradient approximation made simple. Physical Review Letters, 1996, 77(18): 3865–3868

[38] Mathew K, Sundararaman R, Letchworth-Weaver K, Arias T A, Hennig R G. Implicit solvation model for density-functional study of nanocrystal surfaces and reaction pathways. Journal of Chemical Physics, 2014, 140(8): 084106–084113

[39] Kim J, Kwon S, Cho D H, Kang B, Kwon H, Kim Y, Park S O, Jung G Y, Shin E, Kim W G, Lee H, Ryu G H, Choi M, Kim T H, Oh J, Park S, Kwak S K, Yoon S W, Byun D, Lee Z, Lee C. Direct exfoliation and dispersion of two-dimensional materials in pure water via temperature control. Nature Communications, 2015, 6(1): 8294–8302

[40] Smith R J, Lotya M, Coleman J N. The importance of repulsive potential barriers for the dispersion of graphene using surfactants. New Journal of Physics, 2010, 12(12): 125008–125018

[41] Jiao Z, Wang J, Ke L, Liu X, Demir H V, Yang M F, Sun X W. Electrochromic properties of nanostructured tungsten trioxide (hydrate) films and their applications in a complementary electrochromic device. Electrochimica Acta, 2012, 63: 153–160

[42] Van der Ven A, Thomas J C, Xu Q, Bhattacharya J. Linking the electronic structure of solids to their thermodynamic and kinetic properties. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 2010, 80(7): 1393–1410

[43] Van der Ven A, Thomas J C, Xu Q, Swoboda B, Morgan D. Nondilute diffusion from first principles: Li diffusion in Li_xTiS₂. Physical Review B, 2008, 78(10): 104306–1043017

[44] Cai G, Darmawan P, Cheng X, Lee P S. Inkjet printed large area multifunctional smart windows. Advanced Energy Materials, 2017, 7(14): 1602598–1602605

[45] Liang L, Zhang J, Zhou Y, Xie J, Zhang X, Guan M, Pan B, Xie Y. High-performance flexible electrochromic device based on facile semiconductor-to-metal transition realized by WO₃·2H₂O ultrathin nanosheets. Scientific Reports, 2013, 3(1): 1936–1943

[46] Azam A, Kim J, Park J, Novak T G, Tiwari A P, Song S H, Kim B, Jeon S. Two-dimensional WO₃ nanosheets chemically converted from layered WS₂ for high-performance electrochromic devices. Nano Letters, 2018, 18(9): 5646–5651

[47] Yang P, Sun P, Chai Z, Huang L, Cai X, Tan S, Song J, Mai W. Large-scale fabrication of pseudocapacitive glass windows that combine electrochromism and energy storage. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2014, 53(44): 11935–11939

[48] Granqvist C G. Electrochromics for smart windows: oxide-based thin films and devices. Thin Solid Films, 2014, 564: 1–38

[49] Llordés A, Garcia G, Gazquez J, Milliron D J. Tunable near-infrared and visible-light transmittance in nanocrystal-in-glass composites. Nature, 2013, 500(7462): 323–326

[50] Zhang S, Cao S, Zhang T, Fisher A, Lee J Y. Al³⁺ intercalation/de-intercalation-enabled dual-band electrochromic smart windows with a high optical modulation, quick response and long cycle life. Energy & Environmental Science, 2018, 11(10): 2884–2892

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11874036, 51872101, 51672097, 51972124, and 51902115), the National Program for Support of Top-notch Young professionals, the program for HUST Academic Frontier Youth Team, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HUST: 2017KFXKJC001 and 2018KFYXKJC025), the Guangdong Province Key Area R&D Program (No. 2019B010940001), the Local Innovative and Research Teams Project of Guangdong Pearl River Talents Program (No. 2017BT01N111), and Basic Research Project of Shenzhen, China (No. JCYJ20170412171430026). We wish to thank the facility support from the Center for Nanoscale Characterization & Devices, WNLO of HUST and the Analytical and Testing Center of HUST.

Conflict of Interest

ƒThe authors declare no conflict of interest.

Electronic Supplementary Material

ƒƒSupplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12200-020-1033-z and is accessible for authorized users.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2020 Higher Education Press