Fabrication of Carbon Fractals

nniaABSTRACT:

Introduction:

An electrode is a vital part of energy storage devices (for example, Lithium Ion Battery, super capacitors) and biosensors. Accordingly, it has grabbed the attention of many researchers in the past decade [1, 2, 3, and 4]. The structure of the electrode (Nano channel or Microstructure) decides the ability of electrode to absorb ions as well as the charge and discharge capacity.

So far, various materials have been used to fabricate electrodes. Transition metal oxides such as RuO2, IrO2, and Co3O4 have been proven to be good electrode materials in applications requiring high energy capacity and density [5, 6]. Also, Gold is another notable electrode material used in biosensors [7, 8]. However, the price of these materials is the biggest limiting factor for them to be used in research and commercial applications.

Carbon is an ample, cheap, easy to fabricate, environment friendly and chemically inert material. Because of these reasons it has been attracting attention of many researchers. Active carbon, graphitic carbon can be used as an electrode material in supercapacitors and Li-ion battery as mentioned in [9, 10]. Resorcinol-Formaldehyde (RF) gel with nanostructures are one of the novel electrode. [] mentioned how to fabricate electrodes using RF gel, [] compared RF gel as an electrode material with other available ones. These new materials have high conductivity, as well as mechanical capability. Another type of popular materials used now-a-days to fabricate electrodes are Multiwall carbon nanotube (MNWT) [11, 12] and Single wall nanotubes (SNWT) [13, 14]. Even though they offer             , the complex fabrication procedure and high costs require  people to use other materials.  An alternative to nanotubes is Vapor grown carbon fiber (VGCF), [] mentioned VGCF use as electrodes in battery.