Development of electrode material for supercapacitors from heteroatom doped carbon based nanomaterials

Abstract

The world energy council estimates that the world energy supply newlinewill be doubled by 2050. This urged demand leads to the development of newlineadvanced energy conversion and storage devices like solar cells, fuel cells, newlinebatteries and supercapacitors to overcome the exhaustion of fossil fuels. newlineAmong the commonly employed electrochemical energy storage devices, newlinesupercapacitors have drawn more attention from academia and industries, for newlinethe past decades. newline Commonly employed electrode materials for supercapacitors are newlinenanostructured carbon materials, metal oxides and polymer composites. newlineAmong these materials, carbon based nanomaterials are promising one, which newlineincludes activated carbon, porous carbon materials and the graphitic newlineallotropes of carbon. Graphene is a two-dimensional, honeycomb layer of newlinecarbon with sp2 newline hybridization. CNTs are another allotrope of one-dimensional newlinecarbon, discovered by Sumio Iijima in 1991. Attraction will increase when newlinethese 2D and 1D material combined to form hybrid structures. Boron carbon newlinenitride (BCN) nanotubes have been reported due to their slightly similar newlineproperties with that of graphene and CNTs. Apart from synthesizing materials newlinefrom laboratory, inventions are going-on, in deriving carbon materials from newlinebiomass. newline In the present work, carbon based nanomaterials, BCN nanotubes newlineand biomass derived carbon were synthesized and doped with various newlineheteroatoms like B, F, N, P and transition metal like Cr. Major synthesis of newlinethe active material was done by hydrothermal and CVD methods. The newlinesupercapacitor performances of all the synthesized materials were studied in newlinethree electrode cells. The additional properties of the best material were newlinefurther analyzed in two electrode cells. newline newline