Effects of concentration and temperature of EMIMBF4/acetonitrile electrolyte on the supercapacitive behavior of graphene nanosheets

Abstract

Graphene nanosheets (GNSs)–ionic liquids (ILs) electrochemical system is of great interest as it shows excellent electrochemical properties for high performance supercapacitors. In this paper, the effects of concentration and temperature of ILs electrolyte on the electrochemical properties of a GNSs electrode are characterized by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge/discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements (EIS) in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMIMBF₄)/acetonitrile electrolyte. The results show that the internal resistance and the specific capacitance are strongly dependent on the variation of molar concentration of EMIMBF₄, and the GNSs electrode exhibits high specific capacitance (128.2 F g⁻¹) and a wide potential window (2.3 V) in 2.0 M EMIMBF₄/acetonitrile electrolyte, indicating the excellent electrochemical performance. Moreover, the GNSs electrode has wide operating temperatures ranging from −20 °C to 60 °C with a potential window from −0.6 V to 1.5 V in the EMIMBF₄/acetonitrile electrolyte. The result also reveals a weak dependence of the supercapacitive performance of the GNSs electrode on the temperature of the EMIMBF₄/acetonitrile electrolyte. In addition, the specific capacitances have almost no decay after 1500 charge/discharge cycles in the above mentioned temperature region, demonstrating the good stability of the GNSs–ILs system in high-temperature and low-temperature environments.