Surface modification of reduced graphene oxide through successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction method for redox dominant supercapacitor electrodes

Non-covalent surface modification technique, where the pre-reduction of graphene oxide (GO) was carried out to recover the π-π conjugation, was performed through a successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method for preparing redox dominant supercapacitor electrodes. The π-π conjugation of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) facilitated non-covalent interaction with sulfanilic acid azo-chromotrop (SA) to develop electrolyte accessible layer-by-layer (LL) assembly of RGO and SA (LSARGO). In comparison, RGO was modified with SA through continuous stirring of SA and GO, followed by the post reduction technique and designated as NSARGO. The LSARGO revealed higher surface area, electrical conductivity and electrochemical performances than the NSARGO. Sharp redox peaks with well cathodic peak current density vs. square root of the scan rate slope value indicated a redox dominant LSARGO electrode, which was further confirmed by the specific capacitance (SC) values, calculated from the cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) curves in three electrode configuration. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy study also revealed that the LSARGO provided more redox dominant supercapacitor characteristics as compared to NSARGO. The LSARGO exhibited a SC of ∼1023 F g−1 at scan rate of ∼10 m V s−1. The fabricated asymmetric supercapacitor device (ASC) showed an elevated energy and power density of ∼80 W h kg−1 and 17,500 W kg−1, respectively. The ASC experienced high GCD cyclic stability of ∼84% after 10,000 cycles.