Highly Porous Reduced Graphene Oxide-Coated Carbonized Cotton Fibers\nas Supercapacitor Electrodes

Abstract

High-surface-area\ncarbon-based capacitors exhibit significant advantages relative to\nconventional graphite-based systems, such as high power density, low\nweight, and mechanical flexibility. In this work, novel porous carbon-based\nelectrodes were obtained from commercial cotton fibers (CFs) impregnated\nwith graphene oxide (GO) at different dipping times. A subsequent\nthermal treatment under inert atmosphere conditions enables the synthesis\nof electrodes based on reduced GO (RGO) supported on carbon fibers.\nThose synthetized with 15 min and 30 min of dipping time displayed\nhigh specific capacitance given their optimal micro-/ mesoporosity\nratio. Particularly, the RGO/CCF_15A supercapacitor reports\na remarkable specific capacitance of 74.1 F g⁻¹ at\n0.2 A g⁻¹ and a high cycling stability with a 97.7%\ncapacitive retention, making this electrode a promising candidate\nfor supercapacitor design. Finally, we conducted a density functional\ntheory study to obtain deeper information about the driving forces\nleading to the GO/CF structures.