Electrochemical performance of supercapacitor electrodes based on carbon aerogel-reinforced spread tow carbon fiber fabrics

Fabric-based supercapacitor electrodes were fabricated by embedding spread tow carbon fiber fabrics, in monolithic, bicontinuous carbon aerogels (CAG). The incorporation of CAG, at less than 30 wt%, increased the specific surface area of the CAG-CF fabric to above 230 m2 g−1 and the pore volume to about 0.35 cm3 g−1, orders of magnitude higher than that for the as-received carbon fibres. The presence of the CAG not only improves the electrochemical performance of the composite electrodes but may enhance the mechanical response due to the high stiffness of the aerogel structure. Cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge-discharge and electrochemical impedance measurements were performed on symmetric supercapacitor cells consisting of two CAG-reinforced fabrics in an ionic liquid electrolyte. The specific capacitance of the symmetric supercapacitor was determined to be in the range 3–5 F g−1, considerably higher than that for the plain carbon fibers. Since optimum structural electrolytes are not yet available, this value was normalized to the total mass of both electrodes to place an upper bound on future structural supercapacitors using this spread tow CAG-CF system. The maximum specific energy and specific power, normalized to the total mass of the electrodes, were around 2.64 W h kg−1 and 0.44 kW kg−1, respectively. These performance metrics demonstrate that the thin CAG-modified spread tow fabrics are promising electrodes for future use in structural supercapacitors. In principle, in future devices, the reduced ply thickness offers both improved mechanical properties and shorter ion diffusion distance, as well as opportunities to fabricate higher voltage multicell assemblies within a given component geometry.