Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet processed carbon nanotube (CNT)-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanocomposites for gel-electrolyte supercapacitors

Fei-Hong Kuok; Hung-Hua Chien; Chia-Chun Lee; Yu-Chuan Hao; Ing-Song Yu; Cheng-Che Hsu; I-Chun Cheng; Jian-Zhang Chen

doi:10.1039/c7ra12108c

Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet processed carbon nanotube (CNT)-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanocomposites for gel-electrolyte supercapacitors

RSC Adv. 2018 Jan 12;8(6):2851-2857. doi: 10.1039/c7ra12108c.

Authors

Fei-Hong Kuok¹, Hung-Hua Chien¹, Chia-Chun Lee¹, Yu-Chuan Hao², Ing-Song Yu², Cheng-Che Hsu³, I-Chun Cheng⁴, Jian-Zhang Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University Taipei City 10617 Taiwan jchen@ntu.edu.tw.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Dong Hwa University Hualien 97401 Taiwan.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University Taipei City 10617 Taiwan chsu@ntu.edu.tw.
⁴ Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University Taipei City 10617 Taiwan iccheng@ntu.edu.tw.

Abstract

This study evaluates DC-pulse nitrogen atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet processed carbon nanotube (CNT)-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanocomposites for gel-electrolyte supercapacitor applications. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) indicates decreased oxygen content (mainly, C-O bonding content) after nitrogen APPJ processing owing to the oxidation and vaporization of ethyl cellulose. Nitrogen APPJ processing introduces nitrogen doping and improves the hydrophilicity of the CNT-rGO nanocomposites. Raman analysis indicates that nitrogen APPJ processing introduces defects and/or surface functional groups on the nanocomposites. The processed CNT-rGO nanocomposites on carbon cloth are applied to the electrodes of H₂SO₄-polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) gel-electrolyte supercapacitors. The best achieved specific (areal) capacitance is 93.1 F g^-1 (9.1 mF cm^-2) with 15 s APPJ-processed CNT-rGO nanocomposite electrodes, as evaluated by cyclic voltammetry under a potential scan rate of 2 mV s^-1. The addition of rGOs in CNTs in the nanoporous electrodes improves the supercapacitor performance.