Electronic enhancement of hybrid specific capacity of carbon nanotube/bone charcoal composite with Ag nanoparticle decoration

•We detect nano Li ion batteries (NLIB) inside hybrid composites based on graphene.•The specific capacity of carbon nanotubes can strongly increase with 0.8 wt.% of Ag.•We provide an equation to calculate specific capacity of hybrid materials.

We show a significant enhancement of specific capacity of a hybrid composite prepared with carbon nanotube (CNT), bone charcoal and Ag nanoparticle (NP) constituents which may be explained by a mechanism involving the electronic coupling of Fermi levels of the NP and defective CNT. This electronic coupling leads to an additional specific capacity which is given by (CNPxCCNT)/(CNP + CCNT), where CNP and CCNT are the Li specific capacity of NP and CNT constituents, respectively. As a result, the specific capacity of defective carbon nanotube can be increased by twice with incorporation of only 0.8 wt.% of Ag NPs.

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