Functionalization Techniques for Carbon Dedicated to Electrochemical Use

Carbon materials (CMs) have extensively attracted widespread applications from the scientific communities because of their natural abundance, cost-effectiveness, large surface area, high conductivity, and simple functionalization route techniques. However, the agglomeration tendencies of most of the CMs due to their high Van der Wall force of attraction within the carbon particles have been hindering their usage in various areas of research interests. Researchers have successfully developed different functionalization techniques to limit the effect of this agglomeration on their potential areas of application. The enhanced properties of the functionalized CMs played a critical role in the improvement of the electrochemical performances of their derivatives energy storage devices using CMs as the source of the active materials. For CMs to serve as viable dedicated materials in electrochemical use, functionalization is the easiest way to improve their pristine properties. The overview of different functionalization techniques of carbon dedicated to electrochemical use will be presented in this chapter with their specific usage in the electrochemical study. Among the techniques to be presented in this chapter are dry and wet oxidation, polymer wrapping, silanization, surfactant adsorption, silylation, amidation, and polymer grafting approaches. This will enable us to have a better understanding of the most appropriate technique for the functionalization of carbon for electrochemical application improvements. Also, the outlook and prospects of each technique as it was related to different examples presented for electrochemical use will be summarized in this chapter.