Electric
double layer capacitors (EDLCs) usually show high rate
performance and long cycling spans but inferior specific capacitance,
which are mainly created by restriction of the charge storage mechanism.
To improve the capacitive performance, traditional methods include
enlarging surface area, optimizing porous structures, and readjusting
functional groups through heteroatom doping to electrode materials.
Besides that, another promising approach is suggested, which is to
enhance surface roughness of the electrode materials for ion storage
and transport. To prove this view, two porous carbon materials were
fabricated by activation–calcination methods, which allowed
the materials to have identical surface area, porous structures, and
surface composition but the surface roughness. Further electrochemical
measurements exhibited that the optimal sample with higher roughness
has remarkable specific capacitance (up to 562 F g–1), and the increment rate is more than 50% when compared with contrast
sample (367 F g–1). Therefore, optimization of the
surface roughness of electrode materials is another efficient route
to make robust EDLCs.
High-performance electrode modification materials play a crucial role in improving the sensitivity of sensor detection in electrochemical determination of heavy metals.
N-Doped TiO 2 photocatalysts were prepared by a hydrothermal method with tetra-n-butyl titanate (TTNB) and triethanolamine as precursors. The obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), respectively. Photocatalytic activities of the anatase products were investigated on the degradation of methyl orange (MO). The incorporation of nitrogen impurity in anatase TiO 2 was studied by the first-principles calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT). The calculated electronic band structures for substitutional and interstitial N-doped TiO 2 indicated the formation of localized states in the band gap, which lied above the valence band. Excitation from the impurity states of N 2p to the conduction band could account for the optical absorption edge shift toward the lower energies. It was consistent with the experimentally observed absorption of N-doped samples in the visible region.
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