Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS
Volume 3, Issue 13, Pages 1727-1731Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/jz3004624
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- National Science Foundation [NSF-CBET-0852353]
- Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures, and Transport (FIRST) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center
- Directorate For Engineering [852353] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Of Chem, Bioeng, Env, & Transp Sys [852353] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Organic electrolytes such as tetraethylammonium tetrafluroborate dissolved in acetonitrile (TEA-BF4/ACN) are widely used in commercial supercapacitors and academic research, but conflicting experimental results have been reported regarding the dependence of surface-area-normalized capacitance on the pore size. Here we show from a classical density functional theory the dependence of capacitance on the pore size from 0.5 to 3.0 nm for a model TEA-BF4/ACN electrolyte. We find that the capacitance-pore size curve becomes roughly flat after the first peak around the ion diameter, and the peak capacitance is not significantly higher than the large pore average. We attribute the invariance of capacitance with the pore size to the formation of an electric double layer structure that consists of counterions and highly organized solvent molecules. This work highlights the role of the solvent molecules in modulating the capacitance and reconciles apparently conflicting experimental reports.
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