Persulfate treatment as a method of modifying carbon electrode material for aqueous electrochemical capacitors

The activated carbon was modified by the wet method with a solution of ammonium persulfate at room temperature with different times. Kinetics studies showed that the modification took place mostly during the first 60 min of the process. The physicochemical properties of the obtained carbon were evaluated by thermogravimetric studies, Raman and FTIR spectroscopy, elementary and BET analyses. Furthermore, the fabricated material was applied in symmetric capacitors operated on the three aqueous electrolytes (1 M H2SO4, 6 M KOH and 1 M Na2SO4). Mild conditions of the modification process are optimal to obtain electroactive groups on the carbon surface, which make this material useful in a supercapacitor application. In our studies, we noticed that this type of functional groups mainly appears on the surface of the activated carbon, in the first oxidation stage. With prolonged oxidation, they may transform into undesirable groups. The results show that this kind of modification improves the capacity of all the tested supercapacitors. It was connected mainly with an increase of the carbon material’s wettability and in the case of capacitor operated in acid and base electrolytes due to a redox reaction of oxygen functional groups.