1. Introduction
Supercapacitors (for the sometimes confusing usage of their names, trademarks etc. see [
1,
2]) are devices in electrical engineering and electronics accepting and delivering extremely high currents, i.e. high power, like a large conventional capacitor. They store electric energy by separating electric charges across electrochemical interfaces at the boundary between an ionically conducting phase, the electrolyte or electrolyte solution, and an electronically conducting phase, the electrode. Two such interfaces or electrodes joined together by the common ionically conducting phase form the complete device. This operating principle characteristic of a supercapacitor of the electrochemical double layer capacitor type (EDLC-type) is sketched schematically in
Figure 1 and compared with the operation of a rechargeable secondary battery. Different from the conventional capacitor the extremely large surface areas of the participating electrodes the amount of stored charge and thus of stored energy is much larger for a supercapacitor.
The cell voltage of a supercapacitor is limited by the stability of the ionically conducting phase; too high voltages will result in electrolytic decomposition of the solvent or the electrolyte. With a water-based electrolyte solution, this limits the cell voltage to values in the range of 1.2 V, sometimes higher values are claimed because said decomposition may be extremely slow at one or both electrodes because of e.g. kinetic hindrances. With organic-based solvents, larger values are possible. Relationships between properties of the employed materials and the considered range of possible electrode potentials and cell voltages have been critically examined [
3]. Too large values may result in overoxidation of the electrode material at the positive electrode (sometimes slightly confusingly called cathode) [
4].
Because the amount of stored energy depends on the amount of stored charge and the electrode potentials/cell voltage associated with this charge separation larger amounts of stored energy are possible preferably, by storing larger amounts of charge; the accessible potentials and voltages are limited as described. The charge per unit area of a typical electrochemical interface (the double layer) and voltage difference (i.e. electrode potential) can be expressed in terms of an interfacial capacitance. Taking the Helmholtz-model [
5] and the common equation for a parallel-plate condenser
with permittivity
ε = 6 F·m
-1 and distance
d = 300 pm a value
C = 18 μF·cm
-2 is calculated as the capacitance. The capacitance of the electrochemical double layer
CDL can subsequently be considered either in differential form [
6,
7]:
or in integral form:
with the electrode potential
E, the electrode potential of zero charge
Epzc and
q = Δ
Q. They are related to each other according to:
Both values can be determined experimentally [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13].
The value calculated above is very close to a frequently mentioned value of 20 μF·cm
-2 for a perfectly smooth metal surface in contact with a moderately concentrated aqueous electrolyte solution. This value may not be adequate for carbon materials. Randin and Yeager examined various high-pressure stress-annealed pyrolytic graphite’s SAPGs. The basal plane showed
Cdiff = 3 μF·cm
-2 [
14,
15]. This small value was attributed to the space charge region inside the SAPG, not to the electrochemical double layer (see also [
16]). With boronated SAPG values depending on the identity of the electrolyte were slightly higher [
17]. Edge-oriented SAPG showed values of
Cdiff = 50 - 70 μF·cm
-2 [
18]. Respective values for highly oriented pyrolytic graphite HOPG and natural graphite crystals were much smaller, respectively [
19]. Less well-oriented ordinary pyrolytic graphite showed
Cdiff = 16 μF·cm
-2 for the polished basal plane [
14]. Values reported elsewhere for ordinary pyrolytic graphite OPG varied significantly [
20]. Given the large variations of structures in carbon [
21] a wide range of maximum values of
Cdiff per m
2 of surface area and in turn per gram of material may be expected [
22]. An attempt to close the gap between surface areas determined with the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET)-method without/with support by density functional theory (DFT) as well as other approaches taking into account further effects like structural changes during processing of a carbon material into an actual electrode and the double layer capacitance has been reported [
23], a capacitance of 0.1 F per m
2 effective surface area (which may differ considerably from BET-surface area) was tentatively concluded. Some of these authors reported exactly the same value earlier [
24]. Gagnon reported exactly this value much earlier from a study of carbon blacks of various BET-surface areas in contact with a concentrated solution of KOH [
25]. A further complication in establishing any correlation was added by a study of Wen et al. [
26].
CDL per BET-surface area growing with increasing pore size was attributed to growing utilization of said surface area.
A larger storage capability, i.e. a larger capacitance, can accordingly be achieved by a larger interfacial area. The use of highly porous materials as electrodes is thus the central idea in the technical development of the supercapacitor [
1]. Larger surface areas can be achieved mainly by utilizing ever-smaller pores meaning the use of more porous materials. At this step, further aspects of interfacial science come into play: Such surface inside ever-smaller pores must be accessible for the ionically conducting phase. Surface tension, capillary forces, viscosity and wetting are of growing importance. Initial fears that pores with too small openings would be inaccessible for electrolyte solutions, in particular for solvated ions therein needed for charge storage turned out to be partially incorrect. Starting with early observations [
27] in subsequent studies evidence of at least partial desolvation was reported [
28,
29,
30,
31,
32]; this extended the range of useful pores to smaller values than initially expected. However, accessibility of internal pore surface is not all that is needed for materials surface utilization. An electrochemical double layer must be established; in addition, for the surface to become an electrochemically active surface area [
5,
33] it must come into contact with the electrode (solution): it must be wetted. Moreover – last but not least – ionic movement into and out of even tiny pores must proceed at a rate compatible with large electric currents typical of a supercapacitor. With ever-smaller pore openings, conceivable interactions between moving ions and the electrochemical double layer on the walls of the pore mouth may become influential.
Possibly not all surface of a material in a supercapacitor electrode, whether it is an activated carbon (AC), a chalcogenide or any other redox-active material showing pseudocapacitive behavior, is immediately wetted and is sufficiently hydrophilic. This depends very much on materials properties of phases, the solid and the liquid one. Wetting of carbon materials has been discussed before (in the context of fuel cell technology and later of supercapacitors) [
34]. Some carbons (e.g. carbon black, acetylene black) are highly hydrophobic, some (many activated carbons, some graphitic materials) are more or less hydrophilic. Hydrophilicity of carbon surfaces can be increased by creation of surface functional groups containing oxygen. In a typical study carbon fibers created from polyacrylonitrile were exposed to oxygen at elevated temperatures [
35]. An increase of
Cdiff of only a few percent was noticed, but the Faradaic current presumably due to surface redox reactions resulting in a pseudocapacitive behavior increased by several orders of magnitude. Thus the overall increase of capacitance (about 25 %) of a complete device was attributed mostly to redox processes but only a very small fraction to increased utilized because wetted surface area. Unfortunately such oxidative treatment may contribute to faster self-discharge of devices [
36] and faster ageing [
37].
Nevertheless wetting behavior beyond surface properties and pore size considerations was never ignored. For improved wetting of a material’s surface surfactants may be helpful, their use has been established in various fields and industries for a long time [
38,
39]. Surfactants of interest in the present context can be classified into non-ionic, cationic and anionic ones. Typical examples and some frequently encountered compounds are depicted in
Figure 2. Generally they contain a hydrophilic section/end containing heteroatoms like oxygen and a hydrophobic section with aliphatic or aromatic CH-building blocks. The molecular sizes range from about 0.5 to 2 nm.
The same considerations regarding porosity and wetting apply to redox-active materials showing pseudocapacitive behavior as proposed first by Conway et al. [
40,
41,
42,
43,
44] as well as plain battery electrode materials. The particular behavior of some of this materials showing in CVs a response to a changing electrode potential closely resembling that of a capacitor has resulted in the designation by Gileadi and Conway [
41] as pseudocapacitive behavior, for an update see [
45]. An earlier use of the term “pseudo-capacity” by Grahame [
46] refers to redox processes at the mercury electrode/aqueous electrolyte solution interface with reduction and subsequent oxidation of cadmium/cadmium ions, i.e. involving solutions species different from the suggestion by Gileadi and Conway involving redox reactions of surface-attached species.
Complete wetting of the surface area of a carbon or any other supercapacitor electrode material may be impeded by insufficient hydrophilicity or presence of surface area inside of pores with openings too small for electrolyte solution to get inside because of surface tension [
47]. To improve this situation surfactants [
38,
39] improving wetting by reducing the surface tension of the electrolyte solution and/or reducing surface hydrophobicity [
48] have been added to aqueous electrolyte solutions. Presumably the first study of surfactant effects has been reported with surfactant-treated carbon materials (no surfactant addition to the electrolyte solution) [
49]. The studied materials were soaked in solutions of unspecified surfactants and dried. Enhanced wetting was easily verified visibly. Apparently and not very surprisingly, some surfactant was trapped in the porous electrode material and got transferred into the device. No experimental results suggesting specific effects of surfactant molecules adsorbed on the electrode material surface were reported. Considering the already mentioned size of surfactant molecules they may be too large to enter into very small pores, they may actually block openings of very small pores resulting in a negative effect on capacitance [
50,
51,
52,
53,
54].
Most reports on the addition of surfactants into electrolyte solutions (including those inspected within this report) deal with aqueous electrolyte solutions, they will be in the focus of interest in the following sections. Nonaqueous solutions have been studied frequently because they permit a wider cell voltage window of operation. Basically the same considerations apply there also, but now with an inverted perspective: Instead of wetting with an aqueous phase now wetting with a nonaqueous phase is required. Instead of hydrophilic surfaces, hydrophobic surfaces are of interest. Accordingly, hydrophobisation of (instead of hydrophylisation) of surfaces is an option to increase better “wetting” of a surface. Other surfactants than those shown in a representative selection in
Figure 1 may be effective. Better hydrophobisation by vinyltrimethoxysilane than with sodium oleate has been reported with a carbon aerogel (both as prepared and activated) as electrode material [
55,
56]. The same benefits (higher specific capacitance, better capacitance retention with increased current density and lower electric series resistance ESR of a complete cell) achieved with surfactant treatment as observed before with aqueous solutions were found. Different from surfactant addition to the electrolyte solution in this example modification of the carbon surface by grafting (i.e. chemical attachment via covalent bonding) of the surfactant was achieved. Less pronounced effects were achieved by adsorptive treatment of a carbon aerogel with sodium oleate [
57]. Another option of surfactant use has been examined in studies of ACs vacuum-impregnated with fluorinated surfactants [
58]. Moderate performance improvements (higher capacitance, better stability) were best with a cationic surfactant.