Comparison of reduced graphene oxides synthesized chemically with different reducing agents for supercapacitors

Abstract

Abstract The chemical reduction of graphene oxide is an effective method for the synthesis of reduced graphene oxide, having the obvious advantages of low cost and large scale applicability. Our work produced reduced graphene oxide through a simple water bath reduction approach using various reducing agents of N2H4 × H2O, NaBH4, Na2S2O3, HI, and a reference sample without reducing agent at the same reduction temperature and duration time, by which reduced graphene oxides represented as N-RGO, B-RGO, S-RGO, I-RGO, and RGO0 were fabricated. Subsequently, unbonded flexible electrodes based on carbon cloth were fabricated with the reduced graphene oxides mentioned above, whereupon the structure, morphology and electrochemical performance were characterized. The electrochemical results indicate that the order of specific capacitances is N-RGO > B-RGO > S-RGO > RGO0 > I-RGO, while I-RGO’s potential window is wider than that of the others. As a result, N-RGO displays the best electrochemical performance among all reduced graphene oxides, with a specific capacitance as high as 176.0 F × g-1 and 77.8 % of the initial specific capacitance maintained at a high current density of 20 A × g-1.