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Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Electrical Engineering
Christopher Blanks - University of Maryland Eastern Shore
Co-Author(s): Ben Barnes, University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD.; Mark DeMorra, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD.; Dr. Kausik Das, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD.
In past decades, the application of fractals to electrode design for enhanced signaling and electrochemical performance was a popular subject and enabled the growth of consumer micro-electronics. Supercapacitors, which are energy storage devices with many promising characteristics, have largely grown alongside of such developments in electronics, but little work has been done to use fractal electrodes in supercapacitors. In this work, plane-filling and fractal patterns were used in designing laser scribed graphene supercapacitor electrodes, allowing us to examine any correlation of the scaling laws of capacitance with respect to the fractal order and complexity. We have created different nature inspired fractal structures including Koch, Hilbert, Sierpinski and Peano fractal supercapacitors by laserscibing graphene oxide to make conducting graphene electrodes. An interesting exponential relationship between capacitance and fractal order for the more open structured fractals was observed, the exponent of which was proportional to the Hausdorff dimension. Additional non-linear relationships between capacitance and order were observed for other structures which was correlated with inter-plate repulsion and differences in path length. Use of Polyvinyl acetate as a solid state electrolyte showed promising results in obtaining high charge storage density in these fractal supercapacitors. These findings provide the first step in maximizing the efficiency of fractal-based electrolytic devices by exploring the non-intuitive trends in capacitance with respect to fractal order and complexity. In future we will explore the effect of other solid state electrolytes on capacitance and create layered 3D fractal supercapacitors.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF HBCU-UP, Award # 1719425 ; LSAMP, Award # 1619676
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Kausik Das, dskausik@gmail.com
Role: I started this project by assembling the two dimensional laser-scriber robot and enhancing the performance by meticulous calibration. I began testing the conductivity of the scribed paths in the graphene oxide. Currently, I am designing new supercapacitors.
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