Photolithography Tailored Undulating Configuration to Confine Nanostructures on Microtubes Via “Stress-Induced” Effect for Boosting Sodium Ion Storage

The lack of a proper stress dispersion structure to avoid mechanical deformation of the material when constructing anode materials for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) greatly hinders sodium storage behavior. Here, high-penetrating gamma irradiation induces undulating configuration in kapok fibers, where self-assembled molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is anchored. Synchrotron radiation techniques, nanoindentation, density functional theory (DFT) calculations, and finite element simulations were conducted to evaluate the structural evolution of the fibers after gamma irradiation, the nucleation growth of MoS2, and the contact stresses between them. We proved that the undulating configuration not only facilitates the homogeneous nucleation, growth and domain-limited anchoring of MoS2, thereby adequately limiting volume expansion, but also effectively ameliorate the stress concentration phenomenon in the overall section. This works shows a counter-intuitive mechanism whereby the undulating configuration with high curvature resulting from gamma irradiation contributes to excellent mechanical properties in the aggregation of nanomaterials