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Published in: Journal of Nanoparticle Research 7/2017

01-07-2017 | Research Paper

Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres as electrode material for supercapacitors

Authors: Kechan Xia, Guoxu Wang, Hongliang Zhang, Yifeng Yu, Lei Liu, Aibing Chen

Published in: Journal of Nanoparticle Research | Issue 7/2017

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Abstract

Recently, the rapid development of graphene industry in the world, especially in China, provides more opportunities for the further extension of the application field of graphene-based materials. Graphene has also been considered as a promising candidate for use in supercapacitors. Here, nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres (NGHS) have been successfully synthesized by using industrialized and pre-processed graphene oxide (GO) as raw material, SiO2 spheres as hard templates, and urea as reducing-doping agents. The results demonstrate that the content and pretreatment of GO sheets have important effect on the uniform spherical morphologies of the obtained samples. Industrialized GO and low-cost urea are used to prepare graphene hollow spheres, which can be a promising route to achieve mass production of NGHS. The obtained NGHS have a cavity of about 270 nm, specific surface area of 402.9 m2 g−1, ultrathin porous shells of 2.8 nm, and nitrogen content of 6.9 at.%. As electrode material for supercapacitors, the NGHS exhibit a specific capacitance of 159 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 in 6 M KOH aqueous electrolyte. Moreover, the NGHS exhibit superior cycling stability with 99.24% capacitive retention after 5000 charge/discharge cycles at a current density of 5 A g−1.

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Metadata
Title
Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres as electrode material for supercapacitors
Authors
Kechan Xia
Guoxu Wang
Hongliang Zhang
Yifeng Yu
Lei Liu
Aibing Chen
Publication date
01-07-2017
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Journal of Nanoparticle Research / Issue 7/2017
Print ISSN: 1388-0764
Electronic ISSN: 1572-896X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-017-3954-z

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