Novel Electrochemical Capacitors Based on Pyrolysed Polyacrilonitrile(PAN)

摘要

Electrochemical capacitors or supercapacitors are novel power devices with long cycle life (typically > 100000 cycles) and energy storage capabilities, which are higher than those of conventional double layer capacitors. In the following work, we describe the characterisation of supercapacitor electrodes based on pyrolysed polyacrylonitrile (PAN), a cheap and readily available raw material. These PAN - based electrodes have the benefit of a high power and potentially high specific energy arising from pseudocapacitance at the nitrogen sites retained in the aromatic rings after pyrolysis. The effect of doping the nitrogen sites with sulphite (SO_3~(2-)) on the total capacitance was investigated using classical electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry. The effect of pyrolysis temperature and sulphite concentration on the total capacitance was also evaluated The cycle life of the PAN electrodes was evaluated using conventional cycling techniques.