Iron Oxide-Functionalized Graphene Nanocomposites for Supercapacitor Application

The wonder material grapheneGraphene after its discovery in 2004 has attracted enormous research attention globally in various domains such as energy, environment, biomedical, food packaging, to name a few. Graphene is a 2D carbon nanomaterial and possesses excellent properties such as high electrical conductivity, high surface area, good thermal and chemical stability, wide potential window and rich surface chemistry. Due to its high surface area and electronic conductivity, it has been widely used as an electrode in supercapacitorsSupercapacitors. Generally, carbon-based material like grapheneGraphene falls under the category of electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs)Electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLCs), and the EDLC phenomena depend on the electrode/electrolyteElectrolytes interface transport and storage of the developed electrical charge. Graphene-based materials provide high specific capacitance, high power density and long cyclic stability. In contrast, pseudocapacitive materials, e.g. iron oxide-based materials (Fe2O3, Fe3O4), render high energy density, comparatively low power density and cyclic stability. However, the combination of EDLC and pseudocapacitive materials will be a good choice to ameliorate the capacitance, cyclability, energy and power density to improve the electrochemical performance as a whole. In this chapter, we briefly describe about supercapacitorsSupercapacitors, the use of different grapheneGraphene forms, iron oxide nanomaterial and its compositesComposite with graphene designed in order to increase the electrochemical performance of the supercapacitorsSupercapacitors.