Abstract
Due to their relatively low cost, large surface area and good chemical and physical properties, carbon nanofibers (CNFs) are attractive for the fabrication of electrodes for supercapacitors (SCs). However, their relatively low electrical conductivity has impeded their practical application. To this end, a novel active-screen plasma activation and deposition technology has been developed to deposit silver, platinum and palladium nanoparticles on activated CNFs surfaces to increase their specific surface area and electrical conductivity, thus improving the specific capacitance. The functionalised CNFs were fully characterised using scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) and their electrochemical properties were evaluated using cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results showed a significant improvement in specific capacitance, as well as electrochemical impedance over the untreated CNFs. The functionalisation of CNFs via environmental-friendly active-screen plasma technology provides a promising future for cost-effective supercapacitors with high power and energy density.
Highlights
The enormous growth of electric vehicles and portable electronic devices has boosted the needs for energy storage devices simultaneously with high power and energy density
The existence of silver, palladium and platinum elements was detected in functionalised carbon nanofibers (CNFs), respectively
The surface morphology of functionalised CNFs depended on target materials and sputtering time
Summary
The enormous growth of electric vehicles and portable electronic devices has boosted the needs for energy storage devices simultaneously with high power and energy density. The most common energy storage devices are batteries, fuel cells and supercapacitors (SCs). The latter have attracted significant attention and research progress due to their advantageous properties over the formers. SCs exhibit greater power density satisfying the increasing demand for high power electrical appliances and fast charging, and they can withstand larger numbers of charge-discharge cycles [1,2]. SCs suffer from lower energy densities, high costs of raw materials and manufacturing which limit their widespread use and commercialisation [3–11]. One of the most crucial and greatest challenges to achieve these targets is control of nanoscale materials and structures used for the SCs [12–14]. In the past few years, two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials including graphene, graphene-like materials, such as MXenes and transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMDs) have been explored to develop supercapacitors with enhanced electrochemical performance [18–25]
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