Energy Storage Science and Technology ›› 2017, Vol. 6 ›› Issue (2): 263-269.doi: 10.12028/j.issn.2095-4239.2016.0074

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Electrochemical behavior of graphene oxide modified carbon felt as the positive electrode for vanadium flow battery#br#

JING Minghua, FAN Xinzhuang, LIU Jianguo, YAN Chuanwei   

  1. Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, Liaoning, China
  • Received:2016-09-23 Revised:2016-09-30 Online:2017-03-01 Published:2017-03-01

Abstract: As a frequently-used electrode material of the vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), carbon felt (CF) supplies the redox reaction with places which is of great importance in determining the battery performance. However, due to the poor electrochemical activity for vanadium redox couples and the limited efficient reactive area, the performance of VRFB is limited greatly. Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets with high specific surface area and abundant oxygen functional groups have been used to modify carbon felt (CF) by a simple physical adsorption method in this paper. And the electrochemical performance of the prepared GO/CF as the positive electrode in a VRFB has been investigated. The results show that after introducing GO nanosheets, the corresponding electrochemical surface area (ECSA) along with the wettability are greatly improved. Morever, according to the cyclic voltammograms (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS) results, the improvement of the electrochemical response is mainly caused by the enlargement of the ECSA, however, the electrocatalytic activity of the GO/CF electrode has changed little. In addition, the charge/discharge results demonstrate that VRFB with GO/CF as its positive electrode shows higher battery efficiencies and favorable multiplying power performance.

Key words: graphene oxide, carbon felt, electrocatalytic activity, electrochemical surface area, vanadium flow battery, positive reaction