3D Architecture Electrode Materials for Supercapacitors

Abstract

Energy is the prime source of life. The escalated consumption of fossil fuel has created the major problem of energy crisis, which demands the ample production and storage of renewable energy. In connection to this, the energy storage systems (EES) have been proved as secured solution to this setback. In fact, EES are contributing major character in the sector of portable electronic device, aerospace, electric vehicles, smart grids etc. Various energy storage systems like lithium ion batteries (LIBs), fuel cells, supercapacitors (SCs), hybrid devices etc. are being designed and developed by the researchers in the field of energy storage device. LIBs has their intrinsic advantage of high energy density whereas supercapacitors have the merit of high power density with good cyclic stability. As a matter of the fact, a sustainable energy storage device critically claims both optimized energy density along with power density. Supercapacitors due to its high power density, long cycling stability and fast charge/discharge property are considered as one of the most promising energy storage devices. The major bottleneck of SCs is its low energy density in comparison to batteries. Moreover, the energy density is dependent on the value of applied potential window and specific capacitance of the used electrode material. Hence, consistent efforts have been made towards finding high performance electrode materials for SCs. One of the strategies proposed to enhance the energy storage capacity of SCs is the construction of highly porous three-dimensional (3D) architecture electrodes with high surface area in a limited footprint area (Ramadoss et al., 2016; Ramadoss et al., 2017; Kwak et al., 2017). The construction of 3D compact architecture will help to shorten the diffusion path for fast transport of ions/electrons, increase the electrical conductivity, utilization of plentiful active materials in a small area for energy storage, which promotes fast kinetics and excellent electrochemical performance. Based on that, extensive efforts have been devoted to developing 3D electrodes for supercapacitors (Figure 1), and substantial progress and development have been achieved.