Diamond-coated silicon wires for supercapacitor applications in ionic liquids

For a long time sp(2) carbon has been the dominating material for supercapacitor applications. In this paper a new concept of using boron-doped diamond for supercapacitors is proposed. Diamond surface enlargement is realized via bottom-up template-growth. In this method, silicon nanowire electrodes are coated with a thin (similar to 100 nm) layer of nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) by microwave enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MWCVD). The quality of overgrowth is characterized by high resolution scanning electron microscopy which reveals a homogeneous coverage of diamond on Si nanowire surface. To enhance the potential window to 4 V, a room temperature ionic liquid is used as electrolyte. The dilution of the ionic liquid is investigated in terms of conductivity and specific capacitance. The capacitance as measured via cyclic voltammetry reaches 105 mu F/cm(2). An energy density of 84 mu J/cm(2) and a high power density of 0.94 mW/cm(2) are obtained in combination with good stability of over 10,000 charging/discharging cycles. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.