Frontiers in nano-architectured carbon–metal oxide electrodes for supercapacitance energy storage: a review

Supercapacitor (SC) is an energy storage technology that bridges the gap between conventional capacitors and rechargeable batteries. Emerging nano-architectured carbon–metal oxide composites are promising for electrode designs for supercapacitors due to their unique strategy utilizing electrochemical double-layer capacitance (EDLC) and pseudo-capacitance together in single cell to optimize the energy storage ability and electrochemical stability. In recent years, technologies of integrating different metal oxide into single-walled/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and carbon nanofiber (CNF) and/or carbon fiber paper (CFP) have been reported with the focus of the nano-architecture electrodes. This paper provides a review of the frontiers with respect to incorporation of metal oxides into the carbon nanomaterials for capacitive energy storage improvements. Several key performance parameters in terms of specific capacitance, energy density, power density and cyclic stability along with the challenges and design trends are discussed and summarized.