Exfoliated and Aryl Diazonium Salt Functionalized 2D Materials for Supercapacitors

  • Yuling Zhuo

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

Energy storage is a critical technique to balance the energy demand and energy supply. As one of the techniques for energy storage, supercapacitors are appealing compared to other storage devices (i.e. batteries) owing to their fast charging/discharge rates. 2D materials such as graphene and MoS2 have attracted much attention in the applications of electrode because of their relative low cost, high specific surface area and processability, rendering them promising materials for supercapacitors. However, one of the major downsides of these materials is that they restack during the fabrication processes, reducing the electrochemical performance of the electrodes. Improvements can be made by chemical modifying the surfaces of the materials to prevent them from restacking. Herein, I have chosen aryl diazonium salts as the functional species to modify the physiochemical properties because of their ease of reactions and characterizations. This thesis aims to investigate how the aryl diazonium salts affect both the physical and electrochemical properties of graphene and MoS2. The thesis has covered the synthesis, functionalization, characterization and electrochemical measurements of both materials, and their integration into devices for supercapacitors. It is demonstrated that the functionalization of graphene and MoS2 with aryl diazonium salts is successful and it has benefited the electrochemical properties of both materials, which implies that the aryl diazonium salts are potentially highly applicable to other 2D materials in terms of tuning the properties for different applications.
Date of Award31 Dec 2021
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorIan Kinloch (Supervisor) & Mark Bissett (Supervisor)

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