Structural disorder determines capacitance in nanoporous carbons

The difficulty in characterizing the complex structures of nanoporous carbon electrodes has led to a lack of clear design principles with which to improve supercapacitors. Pore size has long been considered the main lever to improve capacitance. However, our evaluation of a large series of commercia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2024-04, Vol.384 (6693), p.321-325
Main Authors: Liu, Xinyu, Lyu, Dongxun, Merlet, Céline, Leesmith, Matthew J A, Hua, Xiao, Xu, Zhen, Grey, Clare P, Forse, Alexander C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capacitance
Carbon
Chemical Sciences
Electrochemistry
Graphene
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy
Material chemistry
NMR
NMR spectroscopy
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Pore size
Storage capacity
Supercapacitors
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Summary:The difficulty in characterizing the complex structures of nanoporous carbon electrodes has led to a lack of clear design principles with which to improve supercapacitors. Pore size has long been considered the main lever to improve capacitance. However, our evaluation of a large series of commercial nanoporous carbons finds a lack of correlation between pore size and capacitance. Instead, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy measurements and simulations reveal a strong correlation between structural disorder in the electrodes and capacitance. More disordered carbons with smaller graphene-like domains show higher capacitances owing to the more efficient storage of ions in their nanopores. Our findings suggest ways to understand and exploit disorder to achieve highly energy-dense supercapacitors.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.adn6242