Design, Fabrication, and Evaluation of On-chip Micro-supercapacitors

Authors

Majid Beidaghi, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Materials Science and Engineering

First Advisor's Name

Chunlei Wang

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

W. Kinzy Jones

Third Advisor's Name

Norman D.H. Munroe

Fourth Advisor's Name

Wenzhi Li

Keywords

Supercapacitors, Carbon-microelectromechanical systems, Graphene, Micro-supercapacitor, electrochemical activation

Date of Defense

5-31-2012

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand for high power and reliable miniaturized energy storage devices, the development of micro-supercapacitors or electrochemical micro-capacitors have attracted much attention in recent years. This dissertation investigates several strategies to develop on-chip micro-supercapacitors with high power and energy density.

Micro-supercapacitors based on interdigitated carbon micro-electrode arrays are fabricated through carbon microelectromechanical systems (C-MEMS) technique which is based on carbonization of patterned photoresist. To improve the capacitive behavior, electrochemical activation is performed on carbon micro-electrode arrays. The developed micro-supercapacitors show specific capacitances as high as 75 mFcm^-2 at a scan rate of 5 mVs^-1 after electrochemical activation for 30 minutes. The capacitance loss is less than 13% after 1000 cyclic voltammetry (CV) cycles. These results indicate that electrochemically activated C-MEMS micro-electrode arrays are promising candidates for on-chip electrochemical micro-capacitor applications.

The energy density of micro-supercapacitors was further improved by conformal coating of polypyrrole (PPy) on C-MEMS structures. In these types of micro-devices the three dimensional (3D) carbon microstructures serve as current collectors for high energy density PPy electrodes. The electrochemical characterizations of these micro-supercapacitors show that they can deliver a specific capacitance of about 162.07 mFcm^-2 and a specific power of 1.62mWcm^-2 at a 20 mVs^-1 scan rate.

Addressing the need for high power micro-supercapacitors, the application of graphene as electrode materials for micro-supercapacitor was also investigated. The present study suggests a novel method to fabricate graphene-based micro-supercapacitors with thin film or in-plane interdigital electrodes. The fabricated micro-supercapacitors show exceptional frequency response and power handling performance and could effectively charge and discharge at rates as high as 50 Vs^-1. CV measurements show that the specific capacitance of the micro-supercapacitor based on reduced graphene oxide and carbon nanotube composites is 6.1 mFcm^-2 at scan rate of 0.01Vs^-1. At a very high scan rate of 50 Vs^-1, a specific capacitance of 2.8 mFcm^-2 (stack capacitance of 3.1 Fcm^-3) is recorded. This unprecedented performance can potentially broaden the future applications of micro-supercapacitors.

Identifier

FI12071111

Recommended Citation

Beidaghi, Majid, "Design, Fabrication, and Evaluation of On-chip Micro-supercapacitors" (2012). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 660.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/660