Electrochemically-stabilized carbon materials for supercapacitor prototypes

A study is presented on supercapacitor prototypes using chimney soot as the active electrode material. Despite its highly developed surface and the existence of capacitive properties, some compounds present in chimney soot make it unstable during the charge process. The irreversible electrochemical process leads to anodic oxidation and cathodic reduction of the soot. In this work, chimney soot was treated electrochemically with different electrochemical potentials, thus altering the initial organic compounds in the material; different parts of organic compounds were affected, so that more stable compounds remained, without all functional groups being removed. The altered material was investigated by IR and TEM spectroscopy. Supercapacitor prototypes were subjected to charge-discharge cycles and their capacitances were determined and compared. (paper)