Graphene aerogel modified carbon fiber reinforced composite structural supercapacitors

Abstract This paper reports the design of a structural supercapacitor using a continuous network of graphene aerogel (GA) impregnated on carbon fiber (CF) fabrics to prepare CF reinforced composite. The GA is synthesized by hydrothermal process of Graphene oxide precursor that enabled the thermal reduction and self-assembly of GA onto the CF fabrics. Composite supercapacitor is prepared by resin infusion technique using GA-modified CF, dielectric electrospun veil separator and an ionic liquid modified epoxy electrolyte. The modification of CFs with highly interconnected and porous GA has provided a significant improvement in the surface area of CFs, resulting in excellent electron transport properties. CF fabrics with 28% GA loading exhibited a capacitance of 92.5 F g−1 at 1 mVs−1, which is 550 times higher than the capacitance of neat CFs and provides an excellent capacitance retention of 98% after 10000 charge-discharge cycles. GA-modified CF reinforced composites yield the highest capacitance of 56 mF g−1. This study provides a practical method for multifunctional, light weight, CF reinforced composites for energy storage applications.