Preparation And Surface Modification Of Stretchable Activated Carbon Networks And Their Application Research

Some people say that 21 st Century will be the "super carbon era",because carbon materials like fullerenes,carbon nanotubes and graphene are successfully synthesized and widely applied in various areas.Among all the carbon materials,activated carbon?AC?has the longest application history.It has been used in fields of environment,chemical industry,medicine,catalysis and so on for thousands of years,due to its highly developed pore structure and surface groups.In recent years,the ability to store electrons using a double layer structure at the surface make AC a new application as electrode material for supercapacitors.Moreover,the rapid development of synthetic technology has brought new vitality to the development of AC.For example,the development of fibrous activated carbon makes it possible for the construction of bulk materials,which provides a broader space for the application of AC.In this thesis,cotton fabrics with weave styles of plain weave,twill weave,three-thread fleecy weave,weft plain weave and satin weave were selected as the starting materials to synthesis carbon networks?CNWs?at high temperature based on a reduction reaction.The obtained CNWs well retain the weave styles of the starting material,which can be twisted,rolled,and stretched repeatedly.CNWs with satin weave and twill weave exhibit relatively high tensile strength.CNWs with three-thread fleecy weave and weft plain weave exhibit excellent stretching property,where the elongation is up to about 32% at the breaking point.It losses only 7% of elongation compared to the starting material.All the obtained CNWs have good electrical conductivity.In the fourth and fifth chapter,surface modification of the CNW was carried out to improve its application performance.CNWs with three-thread fleecy weave style was selected as the substrate material due to its perfect tensile property.In chapter ?,one-dimensional NiCo₂O₄ nanorods were successfully deposited on the surface of the CNW by a hydrothermal method.The NiCo₂O₄ nanorods are about 1 ?m in length and 30⁵0 nm in diameter.the well-defined nanorod array feature leads to the separation of neighboring nanorods from each other and makes most surface of nanorods effectively accessible by electrolyte.In this composite structure,the CNW provides a robust support for the NiCo₂O₄ nanorods,which could ensure good mechanical adhesion even in stretchable mode.NiCo₂O₄ possesses high specific capacitance with excellent rate performance and cycling stability based on the Faradaic reaction on the surface.As a result,the composite exhibits large capacitance of 1402.7 F.g^-1 in 6M KOH,at a constant current density of 2 mV.cm^-2.The specific capacitance is gradually reduced after cycling for 1000 times.The corresponding capacitance loss is 21.1%.The composite electrode keeps almost the same electrochemical performance when sustaining large strain of 20%.,which may lead to its potential application in high-performance flexible devices.In chapter ?,Cu₂O nanocrystals were successfully deposited on the surface of the CNW by an electrochemical deposition method.Cu₂O nanocubes and Cu₂O nanospheres were obtained under different deposition parameters.Composite with surface modification of Cu₂O nanocubes exhibits better performance in photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange than that with Cu₂O nanospheres.The composite with the deposition parameter of pH=9 has the best photocatalytic performance,resulting 95.9% decolorization rate of methyl orange in neutral solution after 3.5 h's illumination.Acid environment increase the decolorization rate at the early stage,but decreased at the later stage.Concentration of the methyl orange solution is important.When the concentration is higher than 10 mg.L^-1,the decolorization efficiency decreases with the concentration increasing.When the concentration is lower than 10 mg.L^-1,there was no significant relationship between decolorization efficiency and concentration.The decolorization rate of CNW/Cu₂O nanocubes composite was up to 83.0% after repeated use for six times.This may lead to its potential application in the efficient degradation of organic dyes.In this paper,we provide a more sustainable and designable synthetic route for CNW by chosing cotton fabrics as starting material.This is particularly valuable in today's shortage of oil resources.The surface modification of CNW provides many possibilities for the application of AC materials.