Relationship between the carbon nano-onions (CNOs) surface chemistry/defects and their capacitance in aqueous and organic electrolytes

Abstract

The effect of surface functionalities on the supercapacitors performances has been highlighted often in many works. However, studies devoted to the influence of carbon defects did not gain particular attention due to the difficulty to quantify such parameter. In this context, carbon nano-onions were used as model material in order to understand the influence of the surface chemistry (nature and amount of oxygen groups) and structural defects (active surface area, ASA) on the capacitance. Different types of thermal treatments in oxidizing or reducing atmospheres allowed to finely tune the surface chemistry and the ASA as demonstrated by temperature programmed desorption coupled with mass spectrometry (TPD-MS). For the first time, the presice control of these characteristics independently one of each other allowed to highlight an important influence of the carbon defects on the capacitance in organic and aqueous electrolytes which outbalance the oxygen functional group effect.