rGO-ZnO Nanowire Deposited Filamentous Seaweed Nanofibrous Cellulose for Paper Supercapacitor

A nanosized architectural (a spider's web) structure of cellulose (I-a) was extracted from green seaweed Chaetomorpha antennina through bleaching treatment. Furthermore, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires were deposited over seaweed cellulose while using a simple hydrothermal method. A simple press method was used to prepare rGO-ZnO seaweed cellulose nanocomposite for the paper supercapacitor. This rGO-ZnO seaweed cellulose paper anode material was characterized by using various analytical techniques such as FT-IR, SEM, TGA, XRD, and tensile tests. XRD peaks reveal that graphene oxide powder when mixed with seaweed cellulose got reduced and gave XRD peak of reduced graphene oxide (rGO). In this paper, supercapacitors were tested in CV, GCD, and EIS. From GCD, the specific energy density of the ZnO-cellulose paper device is found to be 0.00066 Wh/kg whereas, for the rGO-ZnO cellulose, paper device gives a greater energy density of 5.21 Wh/kg. From EIS, the series resistance of ZnO-cellulose is found as 326 ohm and for ZnO-rGO-cellulose as 2.16 O. This marine resources based rGO-ZnO seaweed cellulose paper supercapacitor has application in various energy storage domains including electric vehicles and electronic industries as it is bio-degradable, cost-effective, thinnest, bearing high performance, and safe for getting used.