LDH nanocages synthesized with MOF templates and their high performance as supercapacitors

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are currently attracting intense research interest for their various applications. Three LDH hollow nano-polyhedra are synthesized with zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) nanocrystals as the templates. The nanocages well inherit the rhombic dodecahedral shape of the ZIF-67 templates, and the shell is composed of nanosheets assembled with an edge-to-face stacking. This is the first synthesis of the LDH non-spherical structures. And the mechanism of utilizing metal–organic framework (MOF) nanocrystals as templates is explored. Control of the simultaneous reactions, the precipitation of the shells and the template etching, is extremely crucial to the preparation of the perfect nanocages. And the Ni–Co LDH nanocages exhibit superior pseudocapacitance property due to their novel hierarchical and submicroscopic structures.