Performance Enhancement of Carbon Nanomaterials for Supercapacitors

Car­bon nano­ma­te­ri­als such as car­bon nan­otubes, car­bon nanofibers, and graphene are exploit­ed exten­sive­ly due to their unique elec­tri­cal, mechan­i­cal, and ther­mal prop­er­ties and recent­ly inves­ti­gat­ed for ener­gy stor­age appli­ca­tion (super­ca­pac­i­tor) due to addi­tion­al high spe­cif­ic sur­face area and chem­i­cal inert­ness prop­er­ties. The super­ca­pac­i­tor is an ener­gy stor­age device which, in addi­tion to long cycle life (one mil­lion), can give ener­gy den­si­ty high­er than par­al­lel plate capac­i­tor and pow­er den­si­ty high­er than bat­tery. In this paper, car­bon nano­ma­te­ri­als and their com­pos­ites are reviewed for prospec­tive use as elec­trodes for super­ca­pac­i­tor. More­over, dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal treat­ments on these nano­ma­te­ri­als which can poten­tial­ly enhance the capac­i­tance are also reviewed.