Carbon coated electrospun V2O5 nanofibers for energy storage

Abstract

In hope for improvements and breakthroughs, the research of new materials has been widely studied around the world as electrodes for supercapacitors. In this report, carbon coating of vanadium oxide fibers have been synthesized in order to determine if it would make a promising electrode material. The electrospinning technique has been used to fabricate vanadium oxide fibers in the nano-scale, and the optimization of parameters was necessary. Some parameters which include the voltage applied, distance from the nozzle to the collector and characteristics of the polymer solution, played a role in obtaining the fibers with desired diameter size and optimum porosity. Carbon forms and vanadium oxide have been studied to be effective materials for electrodes of supercapacitors. Thus the combination of both materials has been trialed for three different concentration of carbon, using the hydrothermal synthesis method to understand the morphology and performances of each. Characterization tests such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and Brunauer Emmet and Teller (BET) have been done, in order to compare among the samples and made deductions based on the knowledge of metal oxides and supercapacitors. In conclusion, the carbon coating of 0.1M has shown the largest surface area from the BET characterization. But it might not be the optimum amount to be used for an electrode as clogging might have taken place, losing its efficiency as recorded in the results of cyclic-voltammetry device test. Hence too much carbon added would not be the ideal. On the other hand, 0.01M carbon coating has shown a better capacitance of the three samples and morphology images from SEM characterization has not shown any excess carbon accumulation.