The Synthesized Reduced Graphene Oxide Enhanced the Capacitive Behavior of Activated Carbon/PVA as Potential Electrode Materials

In this work, activated carbon (AC) derived from biomass wastes was implemented as electrode materials in supercapacitor application. This study has adopted rubber seed shell (RSS) wastes to derive AC via pyrolysis process. Meanwhile, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was used as an additive material in order to study the effect of the rGO in capacitive behavior. The synthesized rGO was successfully produced through the electrochemical exfoliation method then further chemically reduced the solution using hydrazine hydrate. Four different electrodes were fabricated using a spin coating method to investigate the effect of added rGO to the capacitive behavior. One sample of AC/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as reference was prepared with ratio 2:8. Meanwhile, the three samples were prepared with different volumes of rGO. A series of techniques to characterize the morphological and structural properties of the samples have been carried out using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive x-ray (EDX), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface analysis. Based on the cyclic measurements, AC/PVA/rGO2 showed the lowest resistivity which was 3.74 and consequently enhanced at least 10 orders in capacitive performance as compared to bare AC/PVA. Therefore, the capability of small amount rGO in enhancing the capacitive behavior paves the way for versatile practical applications in the electronic field.