Study on current collector and electrolyte design/electrochemical behaviour of an in-plane lignin derived laser scribed graphene for microsupercapacitor application

Abstract

Current collectors and electrolyte pairs are frequently overlooked in the development of supercapacitors. In electrode design and sealed packaging, the mechanical and chemical properties of the electrolyte must be retained while maintaining the integrity of microelectrodes and current collectors of the microsupercapacitors. In this research, the physical and electrochemical response of copper (Cu) and 316 stainless steel current collector (SS) for lignin-derived laser scribed graphene (L-LSG) microsupercapacitor with K2SO4 (K+) and H2SO4 (H+) as an electrolyte medium was studied. XPS results confirmed a passivation layer on a copper electrode before and after the electrochemical reaction involving H2SO4 as the electrolyte medium of the highly porous L-LSG structure with six pairs of microelectrodes and graphene current collectors. Analysis of the CV and GCD curves shows that the SS/K+ pair is the most suited for an L-LSG microsupercapacitor, with an areal capacitance and energy density of 22.22 mFcm−2 and 0.00153 mWhcm−2, respectively at 0.08 mAcm−2.

Keywords

• Laser scribed graphene
• Lignin
• Stainless steel
• Microsupercapacitor