Defect-engineered graphene for bulk supercapacitors with high energy and power densities

TL;DR

This paper introduces defect-engineered graphene to significantly enhance supercapacitor energy and power densities, overcoming inherent material limitations and achieving substantial performance improvements over current commercial devices.

Contribution

The study demonstrates defect engineering in graphene as a novel approach to increase quantum capacitance and ion diffusion, leading to a 250% increase in capacitance and 500% higher energy density in supercapacitors.

Findings

250% increase in double layer capacitance beyond theoretical limits

Prototype supercapacitors with 500% higher energy density

Maintained high power density despite energy enhancements

Abstract

The development of high-energy and high-power density supercapacitors (SCs) is critical for enabling next-generation energy storage applications. Nanocarbons are excellent SC electrode materials due to their economic viability, high-surface area, and high stability. Although nanocarbons have high theoretical surface area and hence high double layer capacitance, the net amount of energy stored in nanocarbon-SCs is much below theoretical limits due to two inherent bottlenecks: i) their low quantum capacitance and ii) limited ion-accessible surface area. Here, we demonstrate that defects in graphene could be effectively used to mitigate these bottlenecks by drastically increasing the quantum capacitance and opening new channels to facilitate ion diffusion in otherwise closed interlayer spaces. Our results support the emergence of a new energy paradigm in SCs with 250% enhancement in double layer capacitance beyond the theoretical limit. Furthermore, we demonstrate prototype defect engineered bulk SC devices with energy densities 500% higher than state-of-the-art commercial SCs without compromising the power density.