Iron-oxide based electrodes in aqueous supercapacitors

Climate change and the limited availability of fossil fuels have greatly affected the world economy and ecology. The demand of energy is not coping up the supply of the same. With a fast-growing market for portable electronic devices and the development of hybrid electric vehicles, there has been an ever increasing and urgent demand for environmentally friendly high-power energy resources. This has led to development of energy storage devices, mostly supercapacitors and batteries. In the recent times it is seen that li-ion batteries have been dominating energy storage device sector (Portable electronics, hybrid vehicles and grids). Li-ion still lacks when there is sudden demand in high power. The development of higher energy and power density systems highly rely upon the advancement of new materials used in these devices. Transition oxides and conducting polymers based nanofibers are excellent candidates for application as electrodes in the energy storage devices because of their unique properties such as high capacitance, chemical durability, nature friendly and high specific surface area. Electrospinning is a simple, fast and a scalable technique wherein fiber formation is done with the help of a strong electric field to stretch out a polymer solution to form nanofibers with diameters in the range of 100-800 nm. This fiber-formation technique results in formation of free-standing, binder free and non-woven fiber mat. My thesis focuses on preparation of Iron oxide based nanofibers through electrospinning method, characterizing these nanofibers via spectroscopic/microscopic techniques and developing understanding of their electrochemical mechanisms in an aqueous medium. My work focusses more on structurally supporting these oxides in the conductive carbon fiber matrix which otherwise delaminates while cycling reducing performance in energy storage devices.M.S., Chemical Engineering -- Drexel University, 201