Metal oxides have long been studied in energy storage systems such as supercapacitors (SCs) and Li ion batteries (LIBs) due to their unique electrochemical properties. For example, RuO2, MnO2, NiO, Fe3O4, V2O5, Co3O4 and TiO2 were studied widely for SCs and/or LIBs. However, a major bottleneck for these metal oxide materials is their poor ionic and electronic conductivity, limiting the electrochemical reactions only proceed on their surface and thus preventing the realization of their full charge storage capacity. To solve this problem, our group at Duke has studied various approaches to increase the surface area of the metal oxides and to improve the electric conductivity of the electrode using nanotechnology over the last few years. A promising direction is the mixing conductive fillers such as nanowires and nanotubes with nanostructured metal oxide materials. In this presentation, approaches taken to solve these problems will be presented. The results indicate that by using rationally designed electrode structure containing multifunctional components, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes and conducting polymers, the charge storage property of metal oxide could be improved dramatically .

Synegistic effects of carbon nanostructures in energy storage

245th National Meeting (2013)

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