Electrochemical Properties of CO2 Laser Radiated Carbon-Based Electrodes for Supercapacitors

Abstract

Supercapacitor have been widely researched in order to apply many fields such as a hybrid electric vehicles, high pulse power sources, and emergency power sources requiring high power instantly. However, supercapacitor has low energy density compared to batteries. In order to increase the energy density of supercapacitor, electrode is the very important. Until now, porous carbons, which have low energy density (5~10 Wh kg-1) are the widely used for electrode materials. Recently, many reports have been released using a surface treated carbon or graphene, RGO and CDC, etc. However, these ways have much time and costs in order to compensate the energy. In this study, the CO2 laser treated carbon electrode is investigated for high-performance supercapacitors. First of all, in order to investigate the effect of CO2 laser radiation on energy density and microstructure, carbon electrode was fabricated as a mixture of active material, conductive material, and PVDF binder. The mixed slurry with NMP was coated onto an aluminum plate and dried at 100 oC for 12h. And then CO2 laser was radiated onto the surface of the carbon electrode. A 2032coin cell was assembled with the TEABF4 as electrolyte and separator. The microstructure difference was investigated with SEM and cyclic voltammetry tests also were carried out in the potential range of 0 to 2.7 V for comparison to CO2 laser radiated and un-radiated carbon electrode.