Carbon Nanotubes (CNT)

• Carbon nanotube is a new carbon allotrope discovered by Dr. Sumio

Iijima at NEC (1991).

• CNT is a tubular form of carbon with diameter as small as 1nm,

length: few nm to micro meter.

• It has a nanometer-scale hollow tubular structure and a different

atomic arrangement from other carbon allotropes as graphite,
diamond and C60Bucky-ball.

• Its unique and promising properties have attracted the attention of

researchers around the world and led to active R&D efforts in the
industries.
CNT for Electrochemical Energy Storage

• CNT have been used to enhance the performance of Li-ion batteries.

• Cathode materials such as LiFeO4, LiCoO2 or LiMnO4 have high
voltage window, high energy density, but suffered from the low
intrinsic electrical conductivity, and consequently, the poor
capability in rapid charge and discharge.
• Conventionally, carbon black is used in the cathode or anode side as
the conductive filler. However, the electrical conducive network based
on the particle–particle contact is poorer than that built by CNTs.
Adding of CNTs in LiFeO4 or LiCoO2 was evidenced to decrease the
inner resistance and improve the cycling stability.
APPLICATION OF CNT IN SUPERCAPACITOR

• Supercapacitor is a device with high power density, long cycling stability,

but low energy density.
• Effect of CNT used in SC included the enhancement of the
performance of other electrode materials such as activated carbon
conductive polymer, metal oxides in aqueous electrolyte and the direct
use as electrode materials in organic electrolyte or ionic liquids operated
at high voltage (3–4 V).
• It is an ultimate goal to increase the energy density and cycling stability
of SC to broaden its applications. And the rapid development of
nanomaterials really provides multi-choices to design new electrode and
to optimize the performance of SC.
Challenges with CNT

• Although the energy density based on CNT electrode is 60–90 Wh/kg,

it is still unable to use them to prepare next generation
commercialized SC with energy density of 10–20 Wh/kg.
• The bottleneck, apparently, is how to increase the weight ratio of
electrode material in device, because other components in device,
such as electrolyte, separator, current collector, outer shell, or binder,
did not contribute to capacitance or energy density.
• Densification of CNTs to a buckypaper structure seems necessary, but
its capacitance always decreases with the increase of packing
density.