Nanocarbons such as fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers, graphite oxides, and graphenes has been the key words in 21th century and has led nanoscience and nanotechnology. Due to the existence of various allotropes of carbons, unexpected scientific new findings and their related applications have been extensively investigated. In this talk, I will discuss various issues mainly related to their applications to energy storage.Graphite can be converted to graphite oxide by strong acid treatment, whose interlayer distance is expanded to 0.5 � 0.7 nm. Graphite oxides are water-soluble and can be useful for many applications. Graphite oxides are further intercalated by several polymers for the use of supercapacitors and hydrogen storage. In particular, poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) (PSS)-intercalated graphite oxides demonstrate dominant electric double layer capacitance in ionic liquid with high energy density of 38 Wh/kg at a power density of 61 W/kg. We also demonstrate that the PSS-graphite oxide can enhance hydrogen storage capacity. We further demonstrate that graphite oxides can be transformed into various reduced forms and can reached to highly crystalline graphene sheets by physical treatment.In addition the same material can be used for hydrogen storage. We will introduce quadruple quartz microbalance to measure hydrogen storage accurately in high vacuum chamber. By associating deuterium in hydrogen storage, moisture effect can be solely excluded in the measurement and increase accuracy in the storage capacity measurements. We will also introduce carbon nanotubes for comparison to PSS-intercalated graphite oxides.Graphene can be used as a template directly to grow ZnO2 nanowires. Different ZnO2 morphologies are observed depending on the growth conditions. We will demonstrate the growth of ZnO2and how the power can be controlled by modulation of work function of graphene.

Graphene an graphene oxides for energy harvesting

244th National Meeting (2012)

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