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Charging graphene for energy

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 739–741 (2014)Cite this article

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Energy storage is a grand challenge for future energy infrastructure, transportation and consumer electronics. Jun Liu discusses how graphene may — or may not — be used to improve various electrochemical energy storage devices.

Graphene has captured the imagination of researchers for energy storage because of its extremely high theoretical surface area (2,630 m2 g−1) compared with traditional activated carbon (typically below 1,500 m2 g−1), excellent electrical conductivity, high mechanical strength and potential for low-cost manufacturing. These properties are very desirable for achieving high capacity and energy density, and fast charge and discharge rates. Graphene sheets used in energy storage research are usually prepared by oxidation and reduction of graphite1. Even though these chemically derived graphene materials contain multiple stacked graphene sheets, structural defects (such as vacancies) and oxidized functional groups, they are more suitable for energy storage applications than single-layer graphene, because they can be made in relatively large quantities. In the literature they are also called reduced graphene oxide, or functionalized graphene sheets, but here they are all referred to as graphene for ease of discussion.

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Figure 1: A schematic representation of a hybrid battery–capacitor device, in which an intercalation material would be used as the cathode (left) and graphene as the anode material (right).

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  1. Jun Liu is at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352, USA,

    Jun Liu

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  1. Jun Liu
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Correspondence to Jun Liu.

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Liu, J. Charging graphene for energy. Nature Nanotech 9, 739–741 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.233

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