Issue 48, 2022

Recycling diaper waste for the fabrication of flexible supercapacitors and the role of lead ferrite (PbFe11CrO19) in enhancing their capacitance

Abstract

This work reports the electrochemical performance of sustainable solid-state supercapacitors (SCs) made with cellulose (extracted from diaper waste) and graphene. The electrodes of these SCs were decorated with nanoparticles of PbFe11CrO19 (PbFeCr) ferrite to increase the capacitance of the devices by redox reactions. SCs were fabricated by coating the surface of a diaper with graphene ink, producing a continuous and conductive network and diaper + graphene was employed as the SC electrode. Subsequently, two electrodes were assembled to form a solid-state device (the dielectric separator was a soft textile layer taken from the diaper). The flexible devices were electrochemically characterized and capacitances of 1894.8 and 411.4 F g−1 were obtained for the SCs fabricated with and without PbFeCr, respectively. Thus, the addition of ferrite increased the capacitance by 360%. Furthermore, there was an increase in the energy density of the SCs after the incorporation of ferrite from 36.6 to 164.4 W h kg−1. Also, the SC made using ferrite provided a steady operating voltage of 0.48 V after 10 minutes of uninterrupted discharge, while the device fabricated without ferrite only maintained 0.12 V for the same discharging time. Surface characterization techniques such as absorbance spectroscopy and XPS confirmed the formation of oxygen vacancies, Fe2+/Fe3+ and Cr3+/Cr6+ species on the surface of the electrodes, which worked as redox-centers for the storage of charge in the SCs. In general, the results of this investigation demonstrated that using diaper waste is a feasible option for the fabrication of efficient and sustainable flexible SCs. This benefits the environment because recycled materials were employed.

Graphical abstract: Recycling diaper waste for the fabrication of flexible supercapacitors and the role of lead ferrite (PbFe11CrO19) in enhancing their capacitance

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Jul 2022
Accepted
07 Nov 2022
First published
08 Nov 2022

New J. Chem., 2022,46, 23050-23059

Recycling diaper waste for the fabrication of flexible supercapacitors and the role of lead ferrite (PbFe11CrO19) in enhancing their capacitance

R. Mendoza-Jiménez, J. Oliva, A. I. Mtz-Enriquez, V. Rodriguez-Gonzalez and S. Diaz-Castañon, New J. Chem., 2022, 46, 23050 DOI: 10.1039/D2NJ03707F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements