Highly efficient growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes on Fe–Ni based metal alloy foils for supercapacitors

Abstract

Supercapacitors are highly promising energy devices with superior charge storage performance and a long lifecycle. Construction of the supercapacitor cell, especially electrode fabrication, is critical to ensure good performance in applications. This work demonstrates direct growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on Fe–Ni based metal alloy foils, namely SUS 310S, Inconel 600 and YEF 50, and their use in symmetric vertically aligned CNT supercapacitor electrodes. Alumina and cobalt thin film catalysts were deposited onto the foils, and then CNT growth was performed using alcohol catalytic chemical vapour deposition. By this method, vertically aligned CNTs were successfully grown and used directly as a binder-free supercapacitor electrode to deliver excellent electrochemical performance. The device showed relatively good specific capacitance, a superior rate capability and excellent cycle stability, maintaining about 96% capacitance up to 1000 cycles.

Allotrope carbon materials in thermal interface materials and fuel cell applications: A review

“…However, some studies concluded that the thermal conductivity depends on CNT directionality . Recently, several researchers have increasingly focused on vertically aligned CNT (VACNT) due to their high efficiency for heat transfer into ambient conditions . As shown in Figure , VACNT is successfully grown using plasma‐enhanced CVD (PE‐CVD) method, which commonly produces good‐quality CNT.…”

“…24 Therefore, CNT is outstanding among advanced materials to be implemented in the thermal application and energy storage. CNTs are electrically conducting tools, which are comparable to diamond and have involved in many applications such as TIMs, [25][26][27] batteries, 28-30 energy storage, [31][32][33] supercapacitor, 34 fuel cell, [35][36][37][38] and portable sensors. [17][18][19]21,22 The synthesis of CNT is already established few years ago and has attained large scale of production.…”

“…28 SEM, scanning electron microscopy; TEM, transmission electron microscopy F I G U R E 5 Schematic of the contact resistance between two mating surfaces 78,79 due to their high efficiency for heat transfer into ambient conditions. 34,[83][84][85] As shown in Figure 6, VACNT is successfully grown using plasma-enhanced CVD (PE-CVD) method, which commonly produces good-quality CNT. This method is practical for semiconductors that use silicon (Si) as substrate due to the lower operating temperature than other CVDs, which enable more than 600 C of operating temperature during growth process.…”

“…This study compared the performance with commercial support Pt supported on Vulcan carbon, which achieved only 45 mW cm −2 , under the same condition. Gas diffusion layer consisting of CNT paper was produced in the study of Deng et al and used as MEA for micro‐DMFC application. Comparison of CNT has shown maximum power density of 23.2 mW cm −2 , which is higher than carbon papers.…”

Characterization of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Forests Grown on Stainless Steel Surfaces

“…Modifying the synthesis conditions allows tuning of the geometry, alignment, density, and structure of CNTs, which offers control over their mechanical performance [5,6,7,8,9,10]. CNT forests grown directly on metal substrates, and specifically on steels, are particularly interesting because they offer a conformal coating solution, which is independent from the substrate’s geometry [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. Direct growth avoids the need for intermediate adhesive layers, thus enabling a robust contact interface between the CNTs and the metal [12].…”