Zero-Dimensional Carbon Nanostructures for Supercapacitors

Abstract

The dependence of civilization on energy is rapidly increasing as the decades pass by. The world is now striving to find new sources to harness energy to meet this ever-increasing demand. This demand prompts research on energy generation and, more importantly, on energy storage devices. The latter has a high demand owing to the boom in the use of personal and portable electronic devices. Batteries have been catering to this requirement for quite some time now. Supercapacitors are the upcoming energy storing devices that can replace batteries due to their higher power output and fast recharge (Winter and Brodd 2004). A supercapacitor or an electrochemical capacitor is a simple device that can store charge at the interface of an electrode and an electrolyte (Kötz and Carlen 2000, Frackowiak and Béguin 2001). They are considered to be advantageous over batteries due to their very high specific capacitance, high power density, maintenance-free operations, no memory effect, and tapping into the massive void between the power-energy difference between capacitors and batteries.