Abaalkhail AlBatool A, Alshammari Basheer A, Almutairi Ghzzai N, Alenazey Feraih S, Alotibi Mohammed F, Alenad Asma M, Alharbi Abdullah G, Almoneef Thamer S, AlOtaibi Bandar M
The Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh P.O. Box 6086, Saudi Arabia.
Material Science Research Institute, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh P.O. Box 6086, Saudi Arabia.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jan 27;12(3):427. doi: 10.3390/nano12030427.
Carbon felt (CF) is an inexpensive carbon-based material that is highly conductive and features extraordinary inherent surface area. Using such a metal-free, low-cost material for energy storage applications can benefit their practical implementation; however, only limited success has been achieved using metal-free CF for supercapacitor electrodes. This work thoroughly studies a cost-effective and simple method for activating metal-free self-supported carbon felt. As-received CF samples were first chemically modified with an acidic mixture, then put through a time optimization two-step electrochemical treatment in inorganic salts. The initial oxidative exfoliation process enhances the fiber's surface area and ultimately introduced oxygen functional groups to the surface, whereas the subsequent reduction process substantially improved the conductivity. We achieved a 205-fold enhancement of capacitance over the as-received CF, with a maximum specific capacitance of 205 Fg, while using a charging current density of 23 mAg. Additionally, we obtained a remarkable capacitance retention of 78% upon increasing the charging current from 0.4 to 1 Ag. Finally, the cyclic stability reached 87% capacitance retention after 2500 cycles. These results demonstrate the potential utility of electrochemically activated CF electrodes in supercapacitor devices.
碳毡（CF）是一种廉价的碳基材料，具有高导电性和超大的固有表面积。将这种无金属的低成本材料用于储能应用有利于其实际应用；然而，使用无金属碳毡作为超级电容器电极仅取得了有限的成功。这项工作深入研究了一种经济高效且简单的方法来活化无金属自支撑碳毡。首先用酸性混合物对收到的碳毡样品进行化学改性，然后在无机盐中进行时间优化的两步电化学处理。初始的氧化剥离过程增加了纤维的表面积，并最终在表面引入了氧官能团，而随后的还原过程则显著提高了导电性。在使用23 mA g的充电电流密度时，我们实现了相对于收到的碳毡电容增强205倍，最大比电容达到205 F g。此外，当充电电流从0.4增加到1 A g时，我们获得了78%的显著电容保持率。最后，在2500次循环后循环稳定性达到87%的电容保持率。这些结果证明了电化学活化的碳毡电极在超级电容器器件中的潜在实用性。
