One-pot synthesis of functionalized few-walled carbon nanotube/MnO 2 composite for high performance electrochemical supercapacitors
In this paper, we described a one-pot approach to synthesize functionalized few-walled carbon nanotubes (fFWNTs)/MnO2 composite for high performance electrochemical supercapacitor by mixing raw FWNTs with KMnO 4 under acidic condition. This approach combines the purification and functionalization of FWNTs and the synthesis of fFWNTs/MnO2 composite in one step. The electrochemical performance of the composite was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge-discharge techniques. The results indicate that the composite with 51wt% of MnO2 has the high specific capacitance of 253 F/g (496 F/g based on MnO2) at 10 mV/s and 176 F/g at the high scan rate of 500 mV/s (66% retention), indicating improved specific capacitance and excellent rate capability. Furthermore, the composite show superior electrochemical stability over 2000 charge/discharge cycles at the current density of 5 A/g. Therefore, this simplified one-pot approach of making the fFWNT/MnO2 composite show high promises towards practical application in supercapacitors.
