Plasma for Nano: A Green Approach for Next-Generation Energy Storage Applications

Considering the increasing demand for advanced energy materials to meet consumer requirements, developing advanced high-performing materials at low cost in a green approach is the future step towards fabricating next-generation energy devices. The demand is not only for designing advanced materials but also for replacing rapidly exhausting lithium-based batteries. Therefore, different energy devices besides lithium batteries, such as potassium-ion batteries, multivalent metal-ion batteries, fuel cells, and electrochemical supercapacitors, have been investigated. Nevertheless, the performances of all these devices have to improve and update for obtaining the highest electrochemical performance for consumer applications. As the applied electrode materials highly influence the performance of energy storage devices, it is crucial to design high-performing electrode materials to improve the performance of energy storage devices. Even though several materials reported for high performance, the problems with capacity, rate capability, or electrochemical stability still have to be improved for high performance. Thus, research to produce all-in-one packaged electrodes at a low cost is gaining attention to address these issues. The most promising and widely accepted way to improve the electrochemical properties of electrode materials is their tailoring at the nanoscale. Plasma-enabled techniques can be used as a potentially clean and safe technique to tailor electrode structures at the nanoscale. Plasma assembles the nanostructures from gaseous into solid or solid to solid form on a substrate material. In addition, plasma catalysis properties can be used as a promising approach to designing hybrid structures with metal-anchored nanostructures. Moreover, plasma allows direct growth of material on the substrate, with the advantages of zero-waste production, cost-effectiveness and environmental-friendly nature. In this paper, the potential of plasma for designing hybrid nanostructures and the influence of plasma catalysis for the nanostructure synthesis with high structural quality and controllability is discussed to develop advanced electrodes at the nanoscale.