Gold nanospacers greatly enhance the capacitance of electrochemically reduced graphene

Abstract

Graphene has great potential in electrochemical storage applications for supercapacitors owing to its high conductivity, large surface area, and the economical feasibility in producing it. The main issue that faces graphene nanomaterials in this application is that they tend to restack, thus decreasing the accessible surface area and leading to low capacitance. Gold nanoparticles of various sizes (2–150 nm) can be used as efficient spacing material for electrochemically reduced graphene oxide, thereby greatly increasing capacitance from 4.99 F g−1, when no spacers are used, to a capacitance of 174.2 F g−1 (per gram of graphene) when gold nanospacers of 10 nm diameter are introduced.