Nanomanufacturing of Carbon Nanocomposites for Energy Storage and Environmental Applications

Abstract

Carbon nanomaterials have been widely used in many applications owing to their unique physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. For energy storage applications, the high surface area and high electrical conductivity make carbon nanomaterials promising in supercapacitor and battery systems. However, pristine carbon nanomaterials as electrodes are not applicable for grid-scale applications due to cost and energy density. There is a lack of approaches in efficiently manufacturing low-density carbon nanomaterials on a large scale. Besides, carbon nanomaterials themselves often achieve low energy densities comparing to other high-energy electrode materials such as sulfur and phosphorus. Proper manufacturing of carbon-sulfur and carbon-phosphorus nanocomposites for high-energy lithium-sulfur and sodium-ion batteries were demonstrated to tackle the challenges in cost, energy density, and scalable production for future grid-scale applications. For environmental applications, carbon nanomaterials that possess high surface area and porous feature have been demonstrated as good candidates for water treatment, such as heavy metal removal. To remove toxic hexavalent chromium from wastewater, incorporating nanomaterials to manufacture carbon nanocomposites for achieving high removal efficiency was illustrated in electrochemical reduction process.