Effects of Pore Widening vs Oxygenation on Capacitance of Activated Carbon in Aqueous Sodium Sulfate Electrolyte

Zhang, Lixing; Chi, Yuqin; Li, Zhen; Sun, Xiaolei; Gu, Huazhi; Zhang, Haijun; Chen, Yao; Chen, George Zheng

Abstract

© 2020 The Electrochemical Society ("ECS"). Published on behalf of ECS by IOP Publishing Limited. The commercial activated carbon has a relatively low specific capacitance in the Na2SO4 electrolyte, which hinder the development of asymmetrical supercapacitors with high voltage. Re-activation and oxidative etching methods were applied to change the pore structure of activated carbon, respectively, to study the capacitive behavior of carbon in the Na2SO4 electrolyte. The pore distributions combining with capacitive properties deduce that 0.85 nm is the threshold diameter of the ion-accessible micropores for hydrated Na+ and SO42-. The specific capacitances of both the carbon materials by re-activation and oxidative etching methods are increased by 40%, in comparison with the commercial activated carbon. The enhanced capacitive performances of the carbon materials were mainly attributed to the increased ion-accessible specific surface area and pseudocapacitance, respectively. The oxidative etching is a more facile and economical method for practice application. Combining with MnO2 as the positive electrode, the asymmetrical supercapacitor with a high voltage of 1.8 V exhibits a maximum specific cell capacitance of 50 F g-1 and specific energy of 22.5 Wh kg-1.

Citation

Zhang, L., Chi, Y., Li, Z., Sun, X., Gu, H., Zhang, H., Chen, Y., & Chen, G. Z. (2020). Effects of Pore Widening vs Oxygenation on Capacitance of Activated Carbon in Aqueous Sodium Sulfate Electrolyte. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 167(4), Article 040524. https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/ab75c8

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 29, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Mar 4, 2020
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Mar 7, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2020
• Journal: Journal of the Electrochemical Society
• Print ISSN: 0013-4651
• Electronic ISSN: 1945-7111
• Publisher: Electrochemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 167
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 040524
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/ab75c8
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4106394
• Publisher URL: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/ab75c8
• Additional Information: Journal title: Journal of The Electrochemical Society; Article type: paper; Article title: Effects of Pore Widening vs Oxygenation on Capacitance of Activated Carbon in Aqueous Sodium Sulfate Electrolyte; Copyright information: © 2020 The Electrochemical Society (“ECS”). Published on behalf of ECS by IOP Publishing Limited; License information: cc-by This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.; Date received: 2019-12-01; Online publication date: 2020-03-04