Electrochemical characterisations and ageing of ionic liquid/γ-butyrolactone mixtures as electrolytes for supercapacitor applications over a wide temperature range

Electrochemical properties in mesoporous media of three different ionic liquids (1-propyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium-bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide - Pyr13FSI, 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium-bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide - Pyr14TFSI and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium-bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide - EMITFSI) are investigated from −50 °C to 100 °C and compared with binary mixtures with γ-butyrolactone (GBL). Buckypaper composed of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs) are used to prepare and study coin-cell supercapacitors. Supercapacitor using Pyr13FSI/GBL present a rapid loss of capacitance after only a thousand cycles at 100 °C. On the contrary, EMITFSI/GBL and Pyr14TFSI/GBL prove to be very promising at high temperature (the capacitance loss after 10,000 cycles is 9% and 10%). More drastic ageing tests such as floating are also carried out for these two mixtures at 100 °C and −50 °C. 23% and 15% capacitance losses have been recorded after 500 h of floating at 100 °C for EMITFSI/GBL and Pyr14TFSI/GBL. The capacitance of supercapacitors based on Pyr14TFSI/GBL dropped by 20% after 200 h of floating at −50 °C rather than EMITFSI/GBL show a remarkable stability during floating at −50 °C, with 6.6% capacitance loss after 500 h (3 V at −50 °C). These results show that the mixture EMITFSI/GBL works properly all along the broad range of temperature [-50 °C to +100 °C] and thus proved that our approach is very promising for the development of high performances supercapacitors specifically adapted for extreme environment.