High Capacitance Hybrid Nanomaterials for Supercapacitors Electrodes

摘要

Energy storage systems (ESS) such as lithium ion batteries (LIBs) and electrochemical capacitors (EC) are commercial devices widely used to power all kind of commodity and industrial goods. However, these devices have a limited capacity of storage, and the main reason for this limitation lies on the active material that is commercially available activated carbon (capacitance 80-150 F/g). The amount of energy that is being consumed worldwide grows yearly and projections indicate that this trend will continue exponentially. It is widely accepted that there is an urgent need to produce more powerful and cost-efficient ESS to ease the technological evolutions to come. Graphene is called to lead a technological revolution due to its extraordinary physical properties. Thanks to its very large surface area, electrical conductivity and chemical stability, graphene is the most promising active material to improve the performance of ESS. As a matter of fact, for the last 15 years, scientists and technologists have done a great effort to incorporate graphene in commercial devices. However, graphene is finding a hard time to fit into commercial applications as it tends to restack, losing its large surface area and volumetric capacitance.