The Effects of Graphene Oxide and Reduced Graphene Oxide Conductive Additives on Activated Carbon Supercapacitors

Abstract

With their relative ease of production and coupled strong surface functionality and electrical conductivity properties, graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) are exciting, yet overlooked, graphene-like additive prospects for activated carbon (AC) electrodes in supercapacitors. In this work, we incorporated small amounts of synthesized GO and rGO in AC electrodes via a simple mixing procedure to explore their effects. In addition to materials characterizations, symmetric supercapacitors were made from these electrodes and tested across current densities ranging from 0.1–10 A g−1 and across 10,000 additional charge-discharge cycles at 2 A g−1. Performance measurements indicate that GO and rGO enhance the rate resistance and capacity, respectively, of AC electrodes, but these effects are modest and do not prevent increases in internal resistance over the course of 10,000 cycles. The overall ineffectuality of GO and rGO is reasoned to be due to their isolation and infrequency as a result of the relatively impotent distribution method used.