Carbon nanomaterials for energy and environmental applications

Abstract

Environmental pollution and energy storage are two important issues in the modern day society. In this regard, Carbon nanomaterials have attained immense importance, due to their high surface area and electrical conductivity along with thermal and electrochemical stability. Various classes of mesoporous materials have been studied for energy storage and environmental applications especially waste water treatment and greener alternative to the materials in synthesis. In this regard, the present dissertation discusses the synthesis, characterization of carbon nanomaterials, such as exfoliated graphite (EG) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO), with reference to energy, as well as, environmental applications. EG has been prepared in bulk quantity within one minute using microwave irradiation technique in different methods. As prepared EG material shows outstanding application performance including adsorption of various dyes in aqueous solutions, acts as a filter, absorption of broad range of chemical solvents, as well as, oils, pseudocapacitors, EMI shielding over a broad frequency region, novel flatform for SERS detection for various dyes, adsorption various types of heavy metal ions under aqueous solution. Moreover, rGO has been prepared by the room temperature as well as green reduction methods from graphite oxide (GO), where graphite is oxidized into GO by Hummer’s method. As prepared rGO materials show excellent performance as electrodes for supercapacitor applications. It was observed that, porosity is the dominant factor responsible for overall performance of EG, whereas, surface area is the dominant factor for rGO.