Issue 6, 2016

Enhancing graphene capacitance by nitrogen: effects of doping configuration and concentration

Abstract

Recent experiments have shown that nitrogen doping enhances capacitance in carbon electrode supercapacitors. However, a detailed study of the effect of N-doping on capacitance is still lacking. In this paper, we study the doping concentration and the configuration effect on the electric double-layer (EDL) capacitance, quantum capacitance, and total capacitance. It is found that pyridinic and graphitic nitrogens can increase the total capacitance by increasing quantum capacitance, but pyrrolic configuration limits the total capacitance due to its much lower quantum capacitance than the other two configurations. We also find that, unlike the graphitic and pyridinic nitrogens, the pyrrolic configuration's quantum capacitance does not depend on the nitrogen concentration, which may explain why some capacitance versus voltage measurements of N-doped graphene exhibit a V-shaped curve similar to that of undoped graphene. Our investigation provides a deeper understanding of the capacitance enhancement of the N-doping effect in carbon electrodes and suggests a potentially effective way to optimize the capacitance by controlling the type of N-doping.

Graphical abstract: Enhancing graphene capacitance by nitrogen: effects of doping configuration and concentration

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 nov 2015
Accepted
07 jan 2016
First published
08 jan 2016
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2016,18, 4668-4674

Enhancing graphene capacitance by nitrogen: effects of doping configuration and concentration

C. Zhan, Y. Zhang, P. T. Cummings and D. Jiang, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2016, 18, 4668 DOI: 10.1039/C5CP06952A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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