Anisotropic Black Phosphorene Structural Modulation for Thermal Storage and Solar-Thermal Conversion

Exploiting novel strategies for simultaneously harvesting ubiquitous, renewable, and easily accessible solar energy based on the photothermal effect, and efficiently storing the acquired thermal energy plays a vital role in revolutionizing the current fossil fuel-dominating energy structure. Developing black phosphorene-based phase-change composites with optimized photothermal conversion efficiencyand high latent heat is the most promising way to achieve efficient solar energy harvesting and rapid thermal energy storage. However, exfoliating high-quality black phosphorene nanosheets  remains challenging, Furthermore, an efficient strategy that can construct the aligned black phosphorene frameworks to maximize thermal conductivity enhancement is still lacking. Herein, high-quality black phosphorene nanosheets are prepared by an optimized exfoliating strategy. Meanwhile, by regulating the temperature gradient during freeze-casting, the framework consisting of shipshape aligned black phosphorene at long-range is successfully fabricated, improving the thermal conductivity of the poly(ethylene glycol) matrix up to 1.81 W m −1 K −1 at 20 vol% black phosphorene loading. The framework also endows the composite with excellent phase-change material encapsulation capacity and  high latent heat of 103.91 J g −1 . It is envisioned that the work advances the paradigm of contrasting frameworks with nanosheets toward controllable structure thermal enhancement of the composites.