Search

Spinel ferrites are versatile, low-cost, and abundant metal oxides with remarkable electronic and magnetic properties, which find several applications. Among them, they have been considered part of the next generation of electrochemical energy storage materials due to their variable oxidation states, low environmental toxicity, and possible synthesis through simple green chemical processing. However, most traditional procedures lead to the formation of poorly controlled materials (in terms of size, shape, composition, and/or crystalline structure). Thus, we report herein a cellulose nanofibers-mediated green procedure to prepare controlled highly porous nanocorals comprised of spinel Zn-ferrites. Then, they presented remarkable applications as electrodes in supercapacitors, which were thoroughly and critically discussed. The spinel Zn-ferrites nanocorals supercapacitor showed a much higher maximum specific capacitance (2031.81 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1) than Fe2O3 and ZnO counterparts prepared by a similar approach (189.74 and 24.39 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1). Its cyclic stability was also scrutinized via galvanostatic charging/discharging and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, indicating excellent long-term stability. In addition, we manufactured an asymmetric supercapacitor device, which offered a high energy density value of 18.1 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 2609.2 W kg−1 (at 1 A g−1 in 2.0 mol L−1 KOH electrolyte). Based on our findings, we believe that higher performances observed for spinel Zn-ferrites nanocorals could be explained by their unique crystal structure and electronic configuration based on crystal field stabilization energy, which provides an electrostatic repulsion between the d electrons and the p orbitals of the surrounding oxygen anions, creating a level of energy that determines their final supercapacitance then evidenced, which is a very interesting property that could be explored for the production of clean energy storage devices.

The development of stable and active gold catalysts has arisen as a significant strategy for oxidation of alcohols. Nano-size PVA-stabilized gold nanoparticles immobilized on Sr(OH)2 by colloidal deposition presented high catalytic activity for benzyl alcohol oxidation. In 2.5 h, 2 bar of O2 and without extra-base addition, the calcined support reached 54.6% (100 °C) and 67.4% (140 °C) of conversion, presenting the remarkable and unexplored intrinsic basicity that strontium-based materials retain. With sub-stoichiometric K2CO3 adding, under the same catalytic conditions, the catalyst conducted the reaction with similar activity, but with excellent reusability in the process, without any gold leaching. We investigated the influence that the support synthesis method and the solvent used for the NPs stabilization have on the oxidation activity. The produced materials were fully characterized by XPS, Rietveld refinement, and TEM.