New carbon structure has beneficial nano-scale pore structure.
Quantachrome's Director of Applied Science, Dr Matthias Thommes, and Staff Scientist, Dr Katie Cychosz, contributed their expertise in porous materials characterization to the collaborative work by the University of Texas and Brookhaven National Laboratory that led to the development of a novel micro-mesoporous carbon material, described as exfoliated graphene oxide.
Thommes and Cychosz (above, shown with some of their pore size data) are co-authors of a paper announcing the work published just this month (online) by Science magazine entitled Carbon-Based Supercapacitors Produced by Activation of Graphene by Yanwu Zhu, Shanthi Murali, Meryl D. Stoller, K. J. Ganesh, Weiwei Cai, Paulo J. Ferreira, Adam Pirkle, Robert M. Wallace, Katie A. Cychosz, Matthias Thommes, Dong Su, Eric A. Stach and Rodney S. Ruoff. Science, 12 May 2011 DOI: 10.1126/science.1200770
The new porous, three-dimensional carbon can, according to the group led by Professor Rodney S. Ruoff at the University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering, be used as a greatly enhanced supercapacitor, and thus shows promise for many energy storage uses. This new material can be described as an "electrical charge storage sponge" based on its continuous 3-D network of pores with walls just one atom thick. The material's BET surface area was reported as up to 3100 square meters per gram (greatly increased over typical activated carbons' 1000-2000 m2/g), and pores primarily 0.6- to 5-nm wide.
Links:
University of Texas: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/6932-ruoffenergystorage
Brookhaven National Laboratory: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1275
Dr. Matthias Thommes is a renowned researcher in the area of adsorption and characterization of nanoporous materials. He received his Doctorate in Physical Chemistry with Prof. G.H. Findenegg at Ruhr University Bochum (1989-1991) and Technical University Berlin (1992/93) and joined Quantachrome Instruments in the USA in 2001 as Director of Applied Science. Dr. Thommes has authored and co-authored more than eighty scientific / technical publications (including a monograph and invited book chapters) on the characterization of porous materials and powders. Since 2001 he has given more than 100 presentations, invited talks, and keynote lectures at prestigious international scientific conferences and universities all over the world.
Dr Katie A. Cychosz received her Ph.D. in chemistry with Prof. Adam Matzger at the University of Michigan (2005-2010) studying liquid phase adsorption behavior in microporous coordination polymers, particularly for the desulfurization of transportation fuels. While at the University of Michigan, she was a Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute graduate fellow and, in 2009, she was awarded the Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge award for her graduate research work. She joined Quantachrome in 2010.
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