"Super Battery" Enters People's Life

Recently, a research result titled "Hybridization of Graphite Oxide and Its Application in Energy" led by Professor Wang Xin's research group from the School of Chemical Engineering of South China University of Technology won the first prize of the Provincial Science and Technology Award. This result is expected to greatly improve energy storage performance and bring "super batteries" into people's lives.

Smartphones have brought convenience to people's lives, but fast power consumption is a common problem; electric cars are popular, but their endurance and charging convenience are not satisfactory. Today, with the rapid development of various portable electronic devices, there is an urgent need to seek new energy storage materials with high density, long cycle life, cheap and clean. As we all know, graphite has good chemical stability and can be used as a refractory material, conductive material, wear-resistant lubricating material, and high-temperature metallurgical material, and is widely used. Graphene is a two-dimensional crystal with only one atomic thickness, which is peeled off from graphite material and composed of carbon atoms. It is the thinnest, strongest, and most conductive and thermally conductive new nanomaterial discovered so far. It is called "black gold" and the "king of new materials". It is widely used in energy storage equipment.

How to make the battery capacity larger and store more electricity? "The project takes advantage of the high specific surface area and unique two-dimensional structure of graphite oxide, establishes a general preparation method for three types of hybrid materials: graphene oxide and metal particles, metal (hydride) oxides, and conductive polymers, and expands the application of graphene in energy fields such as fuel cells, supercapacitors, and lithium-ion batteries." Professor Zhu Junwu, a member of the team and a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering, told reporters. At the same time, the research team also designed the preparation and modification methods of amphiphilic graphene oxide, solved the problem that graphene oxide is hydrophilic but not lipophilic, and explained its amphiphilic action mechanism, providing a theoretical premise for the preparation of high-performance graphene hybrid materials. "We also solved the problem of uneven loading of conductive polymer materials on graphene sheets, and constructed a high energy storage density graphene-polyaniline hybrid electrode material, which provides an effective way to solve the problem of low energy density of supercapacitors." Zhu Junwu said that super batteries are no longer just imaginations and are expected to enter thousands of households.