Abstract

Designing electrodes in a highly ordered structure simultaneously with appropriate orientation, outstanding mechanical robustness, and high electrical conductivity to achieve excellent electrochemical performance remains a daunting challenge. Inspired by the phenomenon in nature that leaves significantly increase exposed tree surface area to absorb carbon dioxide (like ions) from the environments (like electrolyte) for photosynthesis, we report a design of micro-conduits in a bioinspired leaves-on-branchlet structure consisting of carbon nanotube arrays serving as branchlets and graphene petals as leaves for such electrodes. The hierarchical all-carbon micro-conduit electrodes with hollow channels exhibit high areal capacitance of 2.35 F cm−2 (~500 F g−1 based on active material mass), high rate capability and outstanding cyclic stability (capacitance retention of ~95% over 10,000 cycles). Furthermore, Nernst–Planck–Poisson calculations elucidate the underlying mechanism of charge transfer and storage governed by sharp graphene petal edges, and thus provides insights into their outstanding electrochemical performance.

Details

Title
Bioinspired leaves-on-branchlet hybrid carbon nanostructure for supercapacitors
Author
Xiong, Guoping 1 ; He, Pingge 2 ; Lyu, Zhipeng 3 ; Chen, Tengfei 4 ; Huang, Boyun 4 ; Chen, Lei 5 ; Fisher, Timothy S 6 

 Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA 
 Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, China 
 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA; School of Mechanical Engineering, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China 
 State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, China 
 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA 
 Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and California nanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 
Pages
1-11
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Feb 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2007687049
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.