Flexible Graphene-Carbon Nanotube Supercapacitors*

A carbon fiber textile has been utilized as flexible supercapacitor electrodes with cost-effective graphene nanoplatelet composite material (GNP) as model material for coating the electrodes. GNP represent a new class of carbon nanoparticles with very high intrinsic electrical conductivity in plane and accessible surface area. Multi wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) at the concentration 50:50 of CNT to GNP were added to take advantage of the high surface area of the composite of these two carbon nano-materials.
The first experimental results without optimization showed promising supercapacitor behavior of the carbon fiber textile with bare pads, better than in [1]. GNP – MWCNT (50:50) electrode material has improved the capacitance density approximately 10 times.
Our newly designed high energy supercapacitors [2] allows increasing the operational voltage window from 3V (natural restriction by the Debye length voltage drop for standard supercapacitors) to the value higher than 20V.
Refences:
Hadis Zarrin, at al. Molecular Functionalization of Graphene Oxide for Next-Generation of Wearable Electronics, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2016, 8, 25428−25437.
Provisional Patent Application No. 62/461,035, filed February 20, 2017.