Effect of carbon black addition on thermal stability and capacitive performances of supercapacitors

Abstract

In this study, we propose a simple way to improve thermal stability of solid-state supercapacitors (SCs) by adding carbon black (CB) into reduced graphene oxide (rGO) electrodes. The CB used as a heat-resistant additive contributes to stable operation of the rGO-CB SC even after 1000 charge/discharge cycles at 90 degrees C. In the case of the rGO SC without CB, it fails after the 166th cycles at 90 degrees C. Compared with the rGO SC, the rGO-CB SC exhibits the decrease in internal resistance from 42 to 18 Omega and the increase in specific capacitance from 115 to 160 F/g. Moreover, the rGO-CB SC shows a smaller variation in specific capacitance (12%) than that of rGO SC (30%) as the temperature increases from 30 to 90 degrees C. The observation reveals that the addition of CB being a heat-resistant additive helps improve performance of thermal stable SCs.