3D carbon based nanostructures for advanced supercapacitors

TLDR

Supercapacitors are pursued for high energy and power density, and carbon‑based nanocomposites are explored for their synergistic high‑power carbon and high‑energy pseudo‑capacitive nanomaterials. This review surveys recent advances in 3D carbon nanostructures for advanced supercapacitors, emphasizing structural intertwinement that yields hierarchical pores, conductivity, and mechanical stability, and discusses emerging material trends. The reviewed structures include CNT networks, graphene architectures, hierarchical porous carbons, and more complex 3D configurations, all designed to interweave pores, enhance conductivity, and improve mechanical robustness. The article compares and summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of these 3D carbon nanostructures based on published literature.

Abstract

Supercapacitors have attracted intense attention due to their great potential to meet the demand of both high energy density and power density in many advanced technologies. Various carbon-based nanocomposites are currently pursued as supercapacitor electrodes because of the synergistic effect between carbon (high power density) and pseudo-capacitive nanomaterials (high energy density). This feature article aims to review most recent progress on 3D (3D) carbon based nanostructures for advanced supercapacitor applications in view of their structural intertwinement which not only create the desired hierarchical porous channels, but also possess higher electrical conductivity and better structural mechanical stability. The carbon nanostructures comprise of CNTs-based networks, graphene-based architectures, hierarchical porous carbon-based nanostructures and other even more complex carbon-based 3D configurations. Their advantages and disadvantages are compared and summarized based on the results published in the literature. In addition, we also discuss and view the ongoing trends in materials development for advanced supercapacitors.