Porous Functionalized Self-Standing Carbon Fiber Paper Electrodes for High-Performance Capacitive Energy Storage

Yuanyuan Zhu; Shuang Cheng; Weijia Zhou; Jin Jia; Lufeng Yang; Minghai Yao; Mengkun Wang; Peng Wu; Haowei Luo; Meilin Liu

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b01210

Porous Functionalized Self-Standing Carbon Fiber Paper Electrodes for High-Performance Capacitive Energy Storage

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Apr 19;9(15):13173-13180. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b01210. Epub 2017 Apr 6.

Authors

Yuanyuan Zhu¹, Shuang Cheng¹, Weijia Zhou¹, Jin Jia¹, Lufeng Yang¹, Minghai Yao¹, Mengkun Wang¹, Peng Wu¹, Haowei Luo¹, Meilin Liu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Guanzhou Key Laboratory for Surface Chemistry of Energy Materials, New Energy Research Institute, School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510006, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0245, United States.

PMID: 28353335
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b01210

Abstract

A facile and cost-efficient approach to functionalize raw carbon fiber paper (CFP) used for a self-standing capacitive electrode has been proposed here. Benefiting from the improved specific surface area and surface functional groups, the functionalized CFP (F-CFP) showed much enhanced capacitive performance, 3 orders of magnitude higher than that of the raw CFP. It delivered the areal capacitance of 1275 mF cm^-2 at 5 mA cm^-2 with a rather wide voltage window of 1.4 V (-0.4 to 1 V vs Ag/AgCl) in 0.5 M H₂SO₄. However, in a neutral 1 M Na₂SO₄ aqueous solution, although the areal capacitance of 1115 mF cm^-2 at 3 mA cm^-2 is slightly smaller, the potential window is much wider (2 V, -1 to 1 V vs Ag/AgCl), indicating a high overpotential of hydrogen evolution. The areal capacitance was still as high as 722 mF cm^-2 at a very fast charge-discharge current density of 50 mA cm^-2, and about 66% of the initial capacitance (at 3 mA cm^-2) was remained in Na₂SO₄, indicating considerable rate capability.

Keywords: carbon fiber paper; functionalize; supercapacitors; wide potential window, high capacity.