Carbon-Halide Nanocomposites:

In the field of 'Electrochemical Supercapacitors', activated carbons are most-widely used electrode materials. The capacity of these carbons can be improved by engineering the morphology and/or materials' chemistry. In this book, a new concept named 'Chemical Halidation' has been proposed to improve the electrochemical capacity of activated carbons. Activated carbons have been modified by mechanochemical halide incorporation. This chemical halidation gives rise to 'Carbon-halide nanocomposites'. Halidation sharply modifies the physical and electrochemical properties of precursor activated carbons. The current work presents an intensive study of structure, morphology and electrochemical properties of carbon-halide nanocomposites using a suites of techniques like XRD, XRF, DSC, BET, SAXS, XPS and Raman spectroscopy. Halidation has been shown to improve the galvanostatic and volumetric capacity of precursor carbon manyfold. The concept of 'Chemical Halidation' has been generalised to different types of carbon (amorphous, crystalline, mesoporous, microporous) and different halides (iodine and bromine). Chemical halidation is proposed as a novel way to improve the capacity of carbons.