Effect of Electrolyte Type on Supercapbatteries Based on Silicon as Anode and Cassava Tuber Activated Carbon as Cathode

Abstract

Supercapbatteries are energy storage devices to solve low power and energy density problems. In this study, using cassava tubers activated carbon on the cathode side and silicon on the anode side. The electrodes are arranged in a coin cell device using various electrolytes 6M KOH and 1M Et4NBF4. The substrate used as the electrode is nickel foam with a drop-by-drop deposition technique. Microstructural properties of cassava tuber activated carbon and silicon were characterized using XRD, SEM, and FTIR. XRD showed cassava tuber-activated carbon was in an amorphous phase and the diffraction peak was similar to that of commercial activated carbon. On the other hand, silicon exhibits a crystalline phase. Based on SEM, the particle size distribution of cassava tuber activated carbon is 8.87μm, the average pore size is 0.988μm, and the percentage of porosity is 69.49%, while the particle size distribution of silicon is 0.065μm. The FTIR results show the formation of a C=C functional group which characterizes the nature of activated carbon at a wavelength of 1592.04 cm-1. GCD tests show that the electrochemical performance of super batteries is better when using 6M KOH electrolyte, specific capacitance, power density, and energy density 27.6F/g, 282.7W/kg, and 7.4Wh/kg.