Significant Capacitance Enhancement via In Situ Exfoliation of Quasi-One-Dimensional Graphene Nanostripes in Supercapacitor Electrodes

Graphene has received much attention as a supercapacitor electrode material due to its chemical inertness in preventing reaction with electrolytes and the large surface area due to its two-dimensional nature. However, when graphene sheets are processed into electrodes, they tend to stack together and form a turbostratic graphite material with a much reduced surface area relative to the total surface area of individual graphene sheets. Separately, electrochemical exfoliation of graphite is one method of producing single-layer graphene, which is often used to produce graphene for supercapacitor electrodes, although such exfoliated graphene still leads to reduced surface areas due to stacking during electrode fabrication. To utilize the large surface area of graphene, graphene must be exfoliated in situ within a supercapacitor device after the device fabrication. However, graphitic electrodes are typically destroyed upon exfoliation, which is largely due to the loss of electrical connectivity among small exfoliated graphene flakes. Here, we report successful in situ exfoliation of graphene nanostripes, a type of quasi-one-dimensional graphene nanomaterial with large length-to-width aspect ratios, as the anode material in supercapacitors. We find that the in situ exfoliation leads to over 400% enhancement in capacitance as the result of retaining the electrical connectivity among exfoliated quasi-one-dimensional graphene nanostripes in addition to increasing the total surface area, paving ways to fully realizing the benefit of graphene electrodes in supercapacitor applications.

Automated summary

Graphene is an attractive supercapacitor electrode material, but tends to stack together during electrode processing, reducing the surface area. In situ exfoliation of graphene nanostripes can greatly enhance capacitance by maintaining electrical connectivity and increasing the total surface area for supercapacitor applications.