Few walled carbon nanotubes have unique advantages compare with single walled carbon nanotubes and multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The high chemical stability, high conductivity of FWNTs make them suitable for many applications, including energy storage devices. For example, a carbon nanotube (CNT)-enabled flexible, conductive and robust film based on a composite of graphene/MnO2 is demonstrated as supercapacitor electrode. Such film offers high active material loading, high areal density (8.80 mg/cm2) and excellent mechanical properties. With ~25wt% of CNTs in the composite, the flexible film shows a Young’s modulus of 2.8GPa and tensile strength of 80MPa. Electrochemical measurements demonstrated that they have outstanding performance as electrodes for supercapacitors, with high specific capacitance, excellent rate-capability and stable capacitance within a wide range of areal densities. More importantly, such highly flexible and conductive film enables the assembling of a full cell using the rolled-up approach without the need of metallic current collectors, significantly reducing both the weight and volume of the supercapacitor. These results suggest these films could have significant potential as electrodes in wearable and lightweight energy storage devices.

Few-walled carbon nanotubes for energy storage

249th National Meeting (2015)

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