Vanadium oxide–carbon nanotube composite electrodes for energy storage by supercritical fluid deposition: experiment design and device performance

Abstract

Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) deposited on porous multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) buckypaper using supercritical fluid CO2(scCO2) deposition shows excellent performance for electrochemical capacitors. However, the low weight loading of V2O5 is one of the main problems. In this paper, design of experiments and response surface methods were employed to explore strategies for improving the active material loading by increasing the organo-vanadium precursor adsorption. A second-order response surface model was fitted to the designed experiments to predict the loading of the vanadium precursors onto carbon nanotube buckypaper as a function of time, temperature and pressure of CO2, buckypaper functionalization, precursor type, initial precursor mass and stir speed. Operation conditions were identified by employing a model that led to a precursor loading of 19.33%, an increase of 72.28% over the initial screening design. CNTs–V2O5 composite electrodes fabricated from deposited samples using the optimized conditions demonstrated outstanding electrochemical performance (947.1 F g−1 of V2O5 at a high scan rate 100 mV s−1). The model also predicted operation conditions under which light precursor aggregation took place. The V2O5 from aggregated precursor still possessed considerable specific capacitance (311 F g−1 of V2O5 at a scan rate 100 mV s−1), and the significantly higher V2O5 loading (∼81%) contributed to an increase in overall electrode capacitance.