Fe-assisted catalytic chemical vapor deposition of graphene-like carbon nanosheets over SrO

Abstract The application of graphene-like carbon nanosheets (GCN) for energy storage has attracted tremendous interest in industry. Thus, synthesis pathways producing GCN with high yield, good electrical conductivity and large accessible surface area are interesting option to obtain the desirable electrode materials. Here, a method to increase yield and functional properties of GCN is proposed using Fe-assisted catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) over SrO catalyst. In this process design, the ethanol vapor is passed through iron particle bed before reaching SrO catalyst for a CCVD synthesis at 950 °C. It is found that Fe modified conversion pathways of ethanol producing a material with 65% higher yield, better crystallinity and lower defect density compared to GCN synthesized over SrO only. Furthermore, the higher yield and low density of defects can also be retained in GCN after KOH activation (800 °C) resulting in a 3D hierarchically porous material with 34% higher specific capacitance, 12% higher capacitance retention and lower charge transfer resistance than materials obtained through a conventional CCVD process with SrO only. The obtained data suggest that the proposed Fe-assisted CCVD synthesis is a promising strategy towards the synthesis of advance functional materials, e.g. with applications in supercapacitors.