3D Printed Hierarchical Porous Carbon Aerogels for Supercapacitors at Ultralow Temperatures

Tuesday, 15 October 2019: 14:00
Room 305 (The Hilton Atlanta)
B. Yao (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Y. Li (Unversity of California, Santa Cruz)
Supercapacitors (SCs) represents an emerging class of fast-charging and stable energy storage devices and have been extensively studied in recent years. However, most of the previous research are focused on SCs in aqueous and room temperature conditions. Improve the performance of SCs, especially in low-temperature environments, is significantly important for prolonged space exploration. This talk will report our new findings of using 3D printing method to fabricate carbon aerogels for supercapacitors at ultralow temperatures. The 3D printed carbon aerogel electrodes with periodic large pores have shown much improved electrochemical performance than the non-3D printed counterparts at low temperatures. More importantly, hierarchical pore structure with large periodic pores, macropores, mesopores and micropores in the 3D printed carbon aerogels enable the porous electrodes to achieve an excellent capacitance of over 150 F/g even under -70 °C. Kinetic analysis further reveals the favorable ion diffusion property in the 3D printed hierarchical porous electrodes. Moreover, the effects of each type of pore structure on capacitance at low-temperature will also be talked. This talk will for the first time demonstrate the superiority of 3D printed porous electrodes for ultralow temperature energy storage, which might open a new door for the future work on high-performance fast-charging energy storage system for space missions.