(Invited) Revealing Charge Storage Processes at the Interfaces of Supercapacitor Electrodes

Abstract

The fast development of electrochemical energy storage devices has revolutionized almost every aspect of modern life by enabling portable electronic devices, electric vehicles, and grid storage of renewable energy. To satisfy the growing industrial and consumer needs for energy storage systems with high output power and short recharge time, the electrode materials should have excellent high-rate performance.1 Electrical double-layer (EDL) capacitors exhibit high-rate capability and long-cycling life as they store charges electrostatically. Using ionic liquid (IL) as the electrolyte leads to a large voltage window but low capacitance. In this first session of the presentation, I will introduce a mathematical model to simulate the IL ion packing structure in nanopores. This model is capable of estimating the EDLC capacitance based on pore size distribution. Then, we further revealed that mixture IL ions can be selectively driven into the pores of different confinement levels, which was confirmed by solid-state NMR, and further explained by DFT simulation2.In the second part of the presentation, I will shift to pseudocapacitors, which are expected to have a much higher charge storage capacity than EDL capacitors and a much higher rate than batteries as they store energy through fast surface redox reactions.3 The emerging 2D material family, 2D transition metal carbides/nitrides MXenes, shows outstanding pseudocapacitive performance due to their ionophilicity, metallic conductivity, and highly reactive surfaces. The proper coupling between electrolyte and electrode is critical to increase energy and power density. In the organic electrolyte, we found that the solvent has a strong impact on the ion/solvent arrangement in 2D MXene material and hence the charge storage capability.4 In the aqueous electrolytes, we successfully introduced surface redox reactions to MXene electrodes by using the water-in-salt electrolytes and by adjusting the initial valence of Ti in Ti3C2 MXenes, which dramatically increases the capacitance of MXene in the neutral aqueous electrolytes5.References Simon, P.; Gogotsi, Y., Nat. Mater. 2020, 19 (11), 1151-1163. Wang, X.; Mehandzhiyski, A. Y.; et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139 (51), 18681-18687. Fleischmann, S.; Mitchell, J. B.; et al., Chem. Rev. 2020, 120 (14), 6738-6782. Wang, X.; Mathis, T. S.; et al., Nat. Energy 2019, 4 (3), 241-248. Wang, X.; Mathis, T. S.; et al., ACS Nano 2021, 15 (9), 15274-15284.