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In situ preparation of nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes on carbon cloth surface as binder-free flexible electrode materials for supercapacitors

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Abstract

It is very important to develop electrode materials with good mechanical flexibility and excellent electrochemical performance to adapt to the development of flexible electronic devices, and the preparation of non-binder flexible electrode is a good strategy. In this work, nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNT) were grown in situ on the surface of carbon cloth (CC) by a simple method and directly used as binder-free electrodes for supercapacitors. The electrochemical tests show that the electrode can achieve an areal capacitance of 4081.6 mF/cm2 when the ampere density is set at 2mA/cm2, and when the ampere density is promoted 10 times to 20mA/cm2, this electrode can still retain 72.8% of the areal capacitance at 2mA/cm2. The flexible electrode can also retain 90.3% of an areal capacitance after 5000 recharge/discharge cycles at a set ampere density of 10 mA/cm2 and 97.6% of its areal capacitance after 50 bending cycles. The electrode was assembled into a symmetrical supercapacitor for electrochemical performance testing, and an areal capacitance of 572.6 mF/cm2 can be maintained when the ampere density is set at 2 mA/cm2, and an energy density of 79.53 and 40.28 µWh/cm2 at a power density of 1000 and 10,000µW/cm2, separately. The excellent electrochemical performance is mainly attributed to the following three points: (1) No binder is used to avoid the problems that affect the conductivity and utilization rate of active substances caused by the binder. (2) The electrode material has a large specific surface area and has more active sites for electrochemical reaction. (3) The presence of N and O is of great help to improve the electrochemical performance of the electrode material.

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Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52064035), the Key Research and Development Program of Gansu Province (21YF5GA078), and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LGG22E020003).

Funding

Funding were provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52064035), Key Research and Development Program of Gansu Province (Grant No. 21YF5GA078) and Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. LGG22E020003)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Yishan Xu, Yanshuang Meng, Mingjun Xiao, Yulong Cheng, Xi Lu & Fuliang Zhu

  2. Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, 30458, GA, USA

    Yue Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Non-ferrous Metals, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Yanshuang Meng & Fuliang Zhu

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  1. Yishan Xu
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  3. Yanshuang Meng
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  4. Mingjun Xiao
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  6. Xi Lu
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Contributions

FZ, YM and YZ guided all the experimental design and led the manuscript preparation and revision work. YX did most of the experiments, data analysis, and prepared the draft manuscript. MX, YC and XL conducted some experiments. All authors have approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yue Zhang or Fuliang Zhu.

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Xu, Y., Zhang, Y., Meng, Y. et al. In situ preparation of nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes on carbon cloth surface as binder-free flexible electrode materials for supercapacitors. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 546 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-09976-6

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