Chirality-sorted carbon nanotube films as high capacity electrode materials

Katarzyna Krukiewicz; Maciej Krzywiecki; Manus J P Biggs; Dawid Janas

doi:10.1039/c8ra03963a

Chirality-sorted carbon nanotube films as high capacity electrode materials

RSC Adv. 2018 Aug 30;8(53):30600-30609. doi: 10.1039/c8ra03963a. eCollection 2018 Aug 24.

Authors

Katarzyna Krukiewicz^{1

2}, Maciej Krzywiecki³, Manus J P Biggs¹, Dawid Janas⁴

Affiliations

¹ CÚRAM - Centre for Research in Medical Devices, National University of Ireland 118 Corrib Village Galway Ireland.
² Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, Silesian University of Technology M. Strzody 9 44-100 Gliwice Poland.
³ Institute of Physics - CSE, Silesian University of Technology Konarskiego 22B 44-100 Gliwice Poland.
⁴ Department of Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology, Silesian University of Technology B. Krzywoustego 4 44-100 Gliwice Poland dawid.janas@polsl.pl +48 32 2371082.

Abstract

Carbon nanomaterials show great promise for a wide range of applications due to their excellent physicochemical and electrical properties. Since their discovery, the state-of-the-art has expanded the scope of their application from scientific curiosity to impactful solutions. Due to their tunability, carbon nanomaterials can be processed into a wide range of formulations and significant scope exists to couple carbon structures to electronic and electrochemical applications. In this paper, the electrochemical performance of various types of CNT films, which differ by the number of walls, diameter, chirality and surface chemistry is presented. Especially, chirality-sorted (6,5)- and (7,6)-based CNT films are shown to possess a high charge storage capacity (up to 621.91 mC cm^-2), areal capacitance (262 mF cm^-2), significantly increased effective surface area and advantageous charge/discharge characteristics without addition of any external species, and outperform many other high capacity materials reported in the literature. The results suggest that the control over the CNT structure can lead to the manufacture of macroscopic CNT devices precisely tailored for a wide range of applications, with the focus on energy storage devices and supercapacitors. The sorted CNT macroassemblies show great potential for energy storage technologies to come from R&D laboratories into real life.