We hypothesize that incorporating carbon fiber backbones into carbon inverse opals will improve their flexibility and electronic conductivity, and that the resulting fabric will deliver more electrochemical capacitance than comparable carbon inverse opal monoliths. We synthesized and assembled polymer colloids into close-packed colloidal crystals within the aperiodic gaps between carbon fibers. These spheres served as a template for a resorcinol-formaldehyde monomer solution that infiltrates and cures within the interstitial voids between the spheres. The spheres thermally degraded upon pyrolysis, leaving the inverse structure of the opaline template. Carbon inverse opal papers are at least two-orders of magnitude more electronically conductive than traditional carbon inverse opal monoliths, but surprisingly, both materials discharged similar electrochemical capacitances upon increasing discharge rates. We attribute this behavior to limitations in ionic mobility through the three-dimensional pore network, as electronic resistance does not appear to govern the power density of carbon inverse opal electrodes.

Rock, paper, opals: The effect of electronic conductivity on the discharge capacitance of ordered carbon nanostructures

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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