Applied Surface Science, Vol.368, 388-394, 2016
Carbohydrazide-dependent reductant for preparing nitrogen-doped graphene hydrogels as electrode materials in supercapacitor
Three-dimensional (3D) nitrogen-doped graphene hydrogels (NGHs) are designed and synthesized in an efficient and fast way by using a strong reductant of carbohydrazide as reducing and doping agent in an aqueous solution of graphene oxide (GO). The transformation of GO suspension to the hydrogels can be completed in 1 h, which can be confirmed by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). With adding different amounts of carbohydrazide, the obtained NGHs behave different doping of N and unlike performances in supercapacitors, which can be demonstrated by elemental analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), N-2 sorption experiments, and electrochemical measurements, respectively. According to the network architectures, the NGHs all exhibited high specific capacitance, NGHs-1, NGHs-2, NGHs-5 and NGHs-10 showed specific capacitance at 167.7, 156.8, 140.4 and 119.3 F g(-1) at 1 A g(-1) in KOH electrolyte. The specific capacitance can still be maintained for 80.5, 79.5, 80.3 and 78.6% with an increase of the discharging current density of 10 A g-1, respectively. More interestingly, the NGHsI based supercapacitor also exhibited good electrochemical stability and high degree of reversibility in the long-term cycling test (81.5% retention after 4000 cycles). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.