Carbon Nanomaterials for Advanced Energy Conversion and Storage

Abstract

It is estimated that the world will need to double its energy supply by 2050. Nanotechnology has opened up new frontiers in materials science and engineering to meet this challenge by creating new materials, particularly carbon nanomaterials, for efficient energy conversion and storage. Comparing to conventional energy materials, carbon nanomaterials possess unique size-/surface-dependent (e.g., morphological, electrical, optical, and mechanical) properties useful for enhancing the energy-conversion and storage performances. During the past 25 years or so, therefore, considerable efforts have been made to utilize the unique properties of carbon nanomaterials, including fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, as energy materials, and tremendous progress has been achieved in developing high-performance energy conversion (e.g., solar cells and fuel cells) and storage (e.g., supercapacitors and batteries) devices. This article reviews progress in the research and development of carbon nanomaterials during the past twenty years or so for advanced energy conversion and storage, along with some discussions on challenges and perspectives in this exciting field.

Fiber‐Type Solar Cells, Nanogenerators, Batteries, and Supercapacitors for Wearable Applications

“…Planar supercapacitors usually have their rear electrode fabricated from metal sheets, foams, papers, or textile substrates 105, 137, 138, 139. In the case of a planar architecture, presence of large area collector electrodes, active materials, conductive additives, and separator membranes results in devices without adequate flexibility, bendability, and air permeability that are necessary for wearable devices 111, 140. The supercapacitors with linear architecture made from fiber electrodes have an interlaced structure, which allows the constituent filaments to move freely relative to each other providing freedom for body movements and permeability to air and moisture 141.…”

The Rotating Flow of Magneto Hydrodynamic Carbon Nanotubes over a Stretching Sheet with the Impact of Non-Linear Thermal Radiation and Heat Generation/Absorption

“…The carbon nanotube (CNT) is composed of allotropes of carbon, and has a cylinder-shaped nanostructure. The molecules of carbon in cylindrical form have remarkable physiognomies that are useful for applied sciences, optics, physical sciences, fabric sciences, energy, health sciences, and manufacturing [1]. Terminology with respect to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was first presented by Iijima [2] in 1991, who explored multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) using the Krastschmer and Huffman technique.…”

Recent advances and challenges of stretchable supercapacitors based on carbon materials

“…In EDLCs, the electrode surface area plays a crucial role in the performance of a capacitor, which can provide higher power densities, fast charge-discharge processes, excellent cycling stabilities, but inferior energy densities. Carbon materials with large specific surface areas and excellent conductivity, such as activated carbon [39,40], carbon nanofibers [41,42], mesoporous carbon [43,44], carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [45,46], graphene [47,48], and carbide-derived carbon [49,50], have been widely employed in EDLCs. While in PCs, composite materials composed of carbon nanomaterials together with electrically conductive polymers (e.g., polyaniline (PANI) [51][52][53][54], polypyrrole (PPy) [55][56][57][58], and poly[3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene] (PEDOT) [59]) or transition metal oxides (e.g., MnO 2 [60,61], NiO [62,63], RuO 2 [64,65], VO x [66][67][68], and TiO 2 [69,70] ) have been widely used for the electrodes.…”