Abstract
Architected materials that actively respond to external stimuli hold tantalizing prospects for applications in energy storage, harvesting, wearable electronics and bioengineering. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) which represent the three-atom-thick, two-dimensional (2D) building blocks, are excellent candidates but have found limited success compared to metallic, inorganic, and organic counterparts due to the lack of up-scalable manufacturing. Here we report the high-throughput printing of 2D TMDs into wafer-scale 3D architectures with structural hierarchy across seven orders of magnitude between critical feature sizes. Anode made of 3D MoS2 architectures comprises the concentric vortex-like intricacy that unites technological merits from architecture, mechanical engineering, and electrochemistry not found in its bulk or exfoliated/epitaxy counterparts. The result is, contrary to expectation, the high-rate, high-capacity, and high-loading lithium (Li)-storage, surpassing those state-of-the-art anode designs while the technique offers an evaporation-like simplicity for industrial scalability.