The Preparation of Electrical Double Layer Capacitor (EDLC) from Boron-doped Reduced-Graphene Oxide (B-rGO) Material

Abstract

The increase of human needs to electronic instruments requires sufficient energy storage devices. One of the electrochemistry-based energy storage devices is electrochemical capacitor (EC). The challenge in EC manufacturing is to prepare ECs with high energy and power densities. It depends very much on the ECs material. In this research, graphene, theoretically a single layer of carbon material, was used as the material for electrical double layer capacitor (EDLC), a type of ECs. To enhance the electrical conductivity, graphene was doped with boron using 1 M H3BO3 (boric acid) with volume variations of 1, 2, and 3 ml. X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDXS) were used to characterize the structure, morphology and element content of the material. Four Point Probe (FPP) method was used to measure the materials electrical conductivity, while Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) measurement was used to inspect the capacitive properties of the material in 1 M Na2SO4 electrolyte solution. The best result, 192.5 F/g, was found from B-doped graphene with 2 ml volume of boric acid (equivalent to 4.37 %B). From this experiment, boron doping significantly improved the capacitive properties of graphene-based EDLC.