Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are a family of carbon nanomaterials that have uses in many technological and medical applications due to their unique properties. However, compared to other nanomaterials, CNT have a significantly lower specific surface areas (SSA), which is a critical limitation for applications. To overcome this limitation, here, we report a new protocol to synthesize a hybrid material composed of varying ratios of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and ferrihydrite (FHY). Furthermore, through a series of physical and electrochemical characterization tests, we determined that 36% FHY and 64% MWCNT is the optimum ratio for a composite that maximizes both SSA and specific capacitance. The calculated SSA of the composite was 190 m2·g−1, 2.9 times higher than that of MWCNT alone. Moreover, the composite retained valuable electrochemical properties of CNT with an estimated specific capacitance of 100 F·g−1. This composite is a promising multifunctional nanomaterial for environmental and technological applications requiring electrochemical reactivity and high specific areas such as environmental biosensors, and capacitive deionization for wastewater remediation, and water softening.
Highlights
In 1991, carbon nanotubes (CNT) was characterized by Iijima [1] and have since received increased attention in both research and development due to their remarkable electrical conductivity, wide thermal operating range, chemical and physical stability, and high aspect ratios [2,3,4]
Some researchers have developed CNT-based hybrid materials that showed a significant improvement in their surface area by including materials such as mesoporous carbon, activated carbon, nanofibers, nanoporous anodic alumina, and ferrihydrite (FHY) [13,14,15,16,17,18]
26◦ (d = 0.34 nm), and three lower intensity diffraction peaks around 44◦ (d = 0.21 nm), 53◦ (d = 0.17 nm), and 78◦ (d = 0.12 nm) (Figure 1a). These peaks correspond respectively to the (002), (100), (004), and (110) diffraction patterns of typical graphite, which indicates that the acid-treated multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) in this study were well graphitized [38]
Summary
In 1991, carbon nanotubes (CNT) was characterized by Iijima [1] and have since received increased attention in both research and development due to their remarkable electrical conductivity, wide thermal operating range, chemical and physical stability, and high aspect ratios [2,3,4]. Consisting of a single layer of cylindrical graphene sheet [5,6] and (2) multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) consisting of multilayered graphene sheets [1,6] Due to their desirable high aspect ratios and electrochemical performance, CNT is good candidate for many applications, including as potential adsorbents for contaminants in water and supercapacitor electrode materials [6,7,8,9,10]. The novelty of this work is that we expand on past studies by synthesizing composites of FHY and MWCNT at five different composition ratios and present a comprehensive characterization and optimization of their physical and electrochemical properties. This study reports on newly developed protocols for synthesizing and characterizing the physical, chemical, and electrochemical properties of these composite materials. These procedures may be adopted in future studies that seek to develop and investigate these composites or others containing metal oxides/hydroxides
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