Metal oxide anchored graphene for energy and environmental applications

Abstract

The thrust towards energy and preventing the environment from pollution are the two major concerns for sustainable development There is a need towards the development of innovative research of material design to improve the storage of energy and concentrate towards renewable energy sources thereby focusing the issues related to environmental concern The objective of this thesis is to develop metal oxide anchored graphene nanocomposite as an electrode material for Supercapacitor and as a Photocatalyst Supercapacitors are the electrochemical capacitor that store energy either using ion adsorption Electric Double Layer Capacitor EDLC or Faradaic redox reactions Pseudocapacitor Graphene due to its unique structure monolayer of sp2 bonded carbon atoms is a promising electrode material for EDLC Graphene has been synthesized by using Chemical reduction of Graphene oxide obtained by Modified Hummers method Various metal oxides such as SnO2 and#945;Fe2O3 CuO have been investigated for pseudocapacitive materials. These pesudocapacitive materials which store energy by faradaic surface reactions by the change in the oxidation state of metal cation during the intimate interactions of ions in the electrolyte with the surface of the active material enables higher specific capacitance Graphene based semiconductor metal oxide nanocomposites have been used widely for the treatment of water released from the industries which contains organic contaminants These organic pollutants are degraded completely by these graphene/metal oxide based nanocomposites Graphene serves as an electron collector and transporter and it can efficiently lengthen the lifetime of charge carrier Development of visible light photocatalyst has been most driven since visible light accounts for nearly 45 whereas only 5 accounts for UV irradiation Hence when taken towards industrial application it is highly desirable to develop grapheme based metal oxide nanocomposite which degrades organic contaminants even under visible light newline