Independent From The Support Of Carbon Nanotube Electrode Preparation And Properties Of Bucky Paper Research

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are tubular materials which are made up of rolled graphite layers. Because of their high surface area, good conductivity and excellent chemical stability, CNTs have become widely recognized electrode materials used in storage devices. Buckypaper is a kind of entangled array of CNT films. With the paper-liked morphology, buckypaper is held together by Van der Waals force at the tube-tube junctions. Due to its unique free-standing structure, buckypaper has outstanding mechanical property and flexibility. As a result, it has been a hot area of research in recent years.In this paper, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were used as basic materials. SWNTs were firstly purified and shortened in a concentrated nitric and sulfuric acid mixture (1:3ration v/v) to obtain a stable SWNTs suspension. And then buckypaper was prepared by vacuum filtered method. The relation between ultrasonic time and structure of buckypaper was studied and the optimun preparation condition was determined by four probe method and cyclic voltammetry (CV). Further more, a pulsed potentio amperometric polymerization was performed to coat conducting polymer onto the carbon nanotubes network of buckypaper. Compared with polyaniline (PANI), the polypyrrole (PPy) decorated buckypaper has better satbility, implying that PPy was more suitable for buckypaper based electrodes. The connection between the PPy’s concentration and the properties of PPy/Buckypaper was also researched by means of controlling the polymerization time. The results of field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), CV and charge-discharge showed that, at some extend, the capacitance was increased with the raising of the PPy concentration.In addition, in order to improve the mechanical strength of buckypaper, a PANI decorated polyacrylic acid (PAA)-polyacrylamide (PAM) hydrogel was prepared to act as the electrolyte-based material. Compared with the normal liquid electrolyte, the hydrogel electrolyte-based material has no negative effect on buckypaper electrode. On the contrary, it did have a positive effect on enhancing the mechanical properties and extending the cycle life of buckypaper.