Date of Award

Spring 5-12-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Dr. Ram Gupta. rgupta@pittstate.edu

Second Advisor

Dr. Khamis Siam. Ksiam@pittstate.edu

Third Advisor

Dr. Pawan Kahol. Pkahol@pittstate.edu

Fourth Advisor

Dr. John Franklin. jfranklin@pittstate.edu

Abstract

Carbon is present in various forms such as coal, carbon nanotubes, graphene, diamond etc. Among various forms, carbon nanotubes and graphene have attracted considerable research attention due to their high thermal stability, high mechanical strength and electrical conduction. These properties largely depend on synthesis procedure. In this work, we synthesized graphene nanoribbons using carbon nanotubes for nanocomposites with polypyrrole. Chemical oxidation was used to unzip the carbon nanotubes. These graphene nanoribbons were used to fabricate nanocomposites with polypyrrole for energy storage applications. The synthesized nanocomposites were structurally and electrochemically characterized.

The structural characterization was performed using X-ray diffraction, FT-IR, SEM, Raman, TGA, and BET surface area measurements. The electrochemical characterizations of these nanocomposites was carried out using cyclic voltammetry. The electrochemical properties were further analyzed using galvanostatic charge-discharge measurements. The specific capacitance of nanocomposites was observed to decrease with increasing scan rates and current densities. The electrochemical measurements showed the highest specific capacitance of 2,066 F/g for 3PPyGO, which was observed to decrease with increasing scan rates.


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