Supercapacitors
Scientists at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU; Russia; www.tpu.ru) and the University of Lille (France) have synthesized a new material, based on reduced graphene oxide (rGO), that has potential applications in supercapacitors for energy storage devices. As described in a recent issue of Electrochimica Acta, the rGO was functionalized by aryne cycloaddition using “pseudocyclic iodoxoborole” (a derivative of hypervalent iodine) as an aryne source. The functionalized rGO (f-rGO) was found to have an interlayer spacing of 0.46 nm, compared to 0.38 nm for the unmodified rGO. As a result, the f-rGO showed a high specific capacitance of 297 F/g — much higher than 170 F/g for rGO. This means the f-rGO can store 1.7 times more energy that the unmodified rGO.
The research work was conducted with the support of the Russian Science Foundation.