Preparation of electrically conductive graphene-based aerogels to modify the supercapacitor electrode surface

Nowadays, a large number of devices for electric energy storage (e.g., batteries, fuel cells, capacitors, supercapacitors/ultracapacitors, etc.) are available. The characteristics of such devices are quite different but they can be conveniently classified by using the Ragone's plot . In particular, fuel cells and batteries have a large energy and a low power contents, on the contrary capacitors have a lower energy and higher power contents. Supercapacitors are just in the middle, with good specific energy and power characteristics, but such values are lower than that characteristic of batteries and capacitors, respectively. Consequently, these energy storage systems are able to light a LED only for a few seconds and a better performance is highly desirable. The introduction of electrically conductive nanostructures (e.g., CNTs, graphene, and pillared graphene) in these devices could significantly increase their performance, moving the supercapacitor energy-power domain to the right-side top of the Ragone's plot.