A general strategy toward transition metal carbide/carbon core/shell nanospheres and their application for supercapacitor electrode

A general and straightforward strategy was developed for fabricating transition metal carbide (TMC)/carbon (C) core/shell nanospheres (NSs) by laser ablation of transition metals in acetone/ethanol liquid. Various TMC/C core/shell NSs such as TaC/C, NbC/C, HfC/C, and MoC/C core/shell NSs were successfully fabricated, highlighting the generality of this method. Crucially, this approach is green, facile, catalyst-free, and especially can be operated under ambient environments. Interestingly, all of the as-synthesized TMCs in the NS cores showed a cubic phase and structures similar to that of NaCl-type. The cores were further encapsulated by amorphous carbon shell with different thickness. As an example of the functional properties of these compound materials, the TaC/C core/shell NSs obtained were investigated as a supercapacitor electrode, which showed a large specific capacitance, excellent rate capability and remarkable cycling ability, revealing that the NSs could be used as new electrode materials for electrochemical energy storage. The photoluminescence of TaC/C core/shell NSs exhibited strong emission under the specific excitation wavelength at room temperature, showing potential biomedical applications due to the good biocompatibility of carbon shell. Besides, the basic physical and chemical reactions involved in the unique formation mechanism under highly nonequilibrium states induced by ultrafast laser ablation were discussed.