Preparation of Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs) as an Electronic Component with the Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs)

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a well-defined nanostructure to exhibit high electrical conductivity and chemical stability, and have been used as an advanced material to make electrodes of super-capacitor. Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), as manufactured by unzipping the CNTs, have more flexible adjustable electrical properties than CNTs, and are regarded an even more promising material for super-capacitor electrodes. This paper presented a series of attempts to prepare GNRs by chemically treating multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs); this is, an Oxidation-Reduction method was tried to make GNRs by unzipping MWCNTs longitudinally. Efforts were made in various trials to find conditions for Oxidation-Reduction processes to unzip MWCNTs. With scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction etc., characterization was performed to analysis the produced GNRs’ micro- and nano-structure. Experiment was also carried out for its electro-chemical performance in the cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge tests. Results as obtained so far showed that the super-capacitor electrodes as made with GNRs appeared to have higher electro-chemical performance than the MWCNTs electrodes.