Low Cost High Performance Electrodes for Supercapacitors: Graphene Oxide Nanoribbons Incorporated in Carbon Paste Electrodes

Recently, graphene nanoribbons (GNR) have gained prominence for applications in high performance electrodes. However, this material might present some complications, such as restacking formation, lower electron mobility due to oxygen-containing functionalities and non-reversible structural damages related to oxidation processes, decreasing GNR response. Several papers sought to minimize this limitation, but the most part use high cost materials, rendering ineffective or hard the application of this device. Less expensive alternatives have to show up, enabling a viable cost/performance ratio. In this sense, the aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of electrodes built from the incorporation of graphene oxide nanoribbons (O-GNR) in carbon paste electrodes (CPE), at different mass percentages (w/w), applied as high performance electrodes. O-GNR synthesis was made through an adaptation of the longitudinal unzipping of multiwalled carbon nanotubes method. Experimental results demonstrated that the simple dispersion of O-GNR in carbon paste electrodes is enough to enhance the response of this material, reaching a double layer capacitance as high as 350 mF cm−2 in 1.0 mol L−1 KCl solution. Scan rate up to 300 mV s−1 showed to disturb the double layer capacitance for all electrodes evaluated.