High-Yield Continuous-Flow Synthesis of Spheroidal C60@Graphene Composites as Supercapacitors

Ibrahim K Alsulam; Thaar M D Alharbi; Mahmoud Moussa; Colin L Raston

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b02656

High-Yield Continuous-Flow Synthesis of Spheroidal C₆₀@Graphene Composites as Supercapacitors

ACS Omega. 2019 Nov 7;4(21):19279-19286. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02656. eCollection 2019 Nov 19.

Authors

Ibrahim K Alsulam¹, Thaar M D Alharbi^{1

2}, Mahmoud Moussa^{3

4}, Colin L Raston¹

Affiliations

¹ Flinders Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia.
² Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Taibah University, Al Madinah Al Munawwarah 42353, Saudi Arabia.
³ School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef 62111, Egypt.

Abstract

Graphene spheres confining fullerene C₆₀ are quantitatively formed under high-shear and continuous-flow processing using a vortex fluidic device (VFD). This involves intense micromixing a colloidal suspension of graphite in DMF and an o-xylene solution of C₆₀ at room temperature in the absence of surfactants and other auxiliary substances. The diameters of the composite spheres, C₆₀@graphene, can be controlled with size distributions ranging from 1.5 to 3.5 μm, depending on the VFD operating parameters, including rotational speed, flow rate, relative ratio of C₆₀ to graphite, and the concentration of fullerene. An electrode of the composite material has high cycle stability, with a high areal capacitance of 103.4 mF cm^-2, maintaining its capacitances to 24.7 F g^-1 and 86.4 mF cm^-2 (83.5%) at a high scan rate of 100 mV s^-1.