Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Nanopores made with low-dimensional semiconducting materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene slit pores, are used in supercapacitors. For modelling purposes, it is often assumed that such pores screen ion-ion interactions like metallic pores, i.e. that screening leads to an exponential decay of the interaction potential with ion separation. By introducing a quantum capacitance that accounts for the density of states in the material, we show that ion-ion interactions in carbon nanotubes and graphene slit pores actually decay algebraically with ion separation. This result suggests a new avenue of capacitance optimization based on tuning the electronic structure of a pore: a marked enhancement in capacitance might be achieved by developing nanopores made with metallic materials or bulk semimetallic materials.
Source: Europhysics Letters (EPL)
Authors: Alpha A. Lee, Dominic Vella, Alain Goriely
Institutions: Harvard University, University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
Field: Chemistry
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2292013492