Abstract
Transition metal nitrides have stimulated a growing research and technological interests due to their fascinating properties, holding great promise for wearable energy storages, portable electronics, and many other applications. However, tailorable and efficient production of metallic nitrides in a cost-effective manner has remained a daunting challenge by far. Here a biotemplate-assisted strategy is reported with generality and scalability that employs the natural-abundant diatomites as growth templates and is applicable to producing various transition metal nitrides, including but not limited to, VN, Mo2N, and WN. The conformal growth of nitride materials would inherit the morphological features of the diatomite template, thereby, endowing the obtained architectures with versatile pore structures and abundant edge defects. Thus-derived metal nitrides with favorable electrical conductivity and solution-processible feature have significant implications for flexible printed circuits and electronics. The excellent pseudocapacitive properties of metal nitrides further lead to the construction of flexible, symmetric quasi-solid-state supercapacitor devices with stable performance under mechanical deformation (achieving an energy density of 15.5 Wh kg(-1) at a power density of 1147.3 W kg(-1)). The demonstration of such biotemplated synthesis would offer an efficient solution to expand the family of emerging nitride materials with attractive properties for next-generation wearable applications.