Roll-to-roll synthesis of vertically aligned carbon nanotube electrodes for electrical double layer capacitors

• Published in: Nano energy 2014-09, Vol.8, p.9-16
• Main Authors: Arcila-Velez, Margarita R., Zhu, Jingyi, Childress, Anthony, Karakaya, Mehmet, Podila, Ramakrishna, Rao, Apparao M., Roberts, Mark E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chemical vapor deposition; Roll-to-roll synthesis; Supercapacitor; Ultracapacitor; Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes
• ISSN: 2211-2855
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2014.05.004

Research in carbon nanomaterials has seen tremendous growth in recent years; however, technological advances are limited by the lack of continuous and scalable synthesis methods. Here we present a scalable roll-to-roll process for synthesizing vertically-aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) on Al foil ribbons which are continuously drawn through a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactor operating at ambient pressure and a relatively low growth temperature (600°C). Electrodes comprised of VACNT forests synthesized in this process are directly assembled into supercapacitor cells, which yield high power densities (1270W/kg) and energy densities (11.5Wh/kg). These devices exhibit excellent cycle stability with no loss in performance over more than a thousand cycles. [Display omitted] •Scalable manufacturing of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) supercaps is challenging.•A new roll-to-roll process (R2R) for synthesizing VACNTs on kitchen Al foil at 600°C is presented.•Supercaps comprised of VACNTs from R2R yield high power & energy densities (1270W/kg and 11.5Wh/kg).•VACNTs supercaps assembled from R2R process are stable over thousands of cycles.