Rational design and controlled synthesis of functional nanomaterials with well-tailored properties are essential for realizing their exciting applications in energy technologies. This talk will discuss how we rationally design and integrate various nanoscale building blocks into desired architectures to optimize the fundamental energy transformation processes for high-performance energy storage devices: electrochemical supercapacitors. Firstly, I will present our general design of three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical nanostructured supercapacitor electrodes that combine carbon nanomaterials and functional metal oxides and allow efficient charge carrier transport and ion diffusion. The resulting devices fabricated with low-cost materials through the scalable process exhibit promising characteristics with high power and energy densities and remarkable cycling stability, offering the potential for large-scale energy storage systems. Secondly, I will introduce a unique class of polymeric materials: nanostructured conducting polymer hydrogels with high electrochemical activity for flexible supercapacitor devices. These hydrogels based electrodes demonstrate excellent supercapacitor performance with high specific capacitance, good rate and cycle performance.

Rational design of hybrid nanostructured materials for supercapacitors

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.