Collaborative Research: Photon-Enabled Atomic Drilling of Graphene for Supercapacitors

超级电容器已经成为下一代高性能电源，用于广泛的消费、生物医学、医疗保健和军事应用中的便携式设备。如何在长循环寿命的情况下同时获得高能量密度和功率密度仍然是超级电容器设计中的一个基本挑战。由含有纳米孔和微孔的三维石墨烯结构组成的多孔石墨烯骨架，由于其优越的电化学性质，已成为解决这一挑战的一种有前途的解决方案。然而，现有的制备石墨烯骨架的方法往往依赖于热化学腐蚀工艺，由于复杂的实验和腐蚀液的热稳定性差，这种工艺效率低，可控性差。该奖项支持基础研究，为开发利用光子-材料相互作用的新型制造策略提供知识，以高效地实现多孔石墨烯骨架的制造。这项研究将产生重大的更广泛的影响，因为超级电容器的潜在变革性性能改进将溢出到几乎所有的经济部门。该项目还为研究生、本科生和K-12学生提供了一个综合的科学和工程培训平台，特别强调促进女性和未被充分代表的学生参与研究。该项目的目标是建立一种新的光子使能原子钻探工艺，以制造面向超级电容器应用的多孔石墨烯骨架。光子使能原子钻探方法利用纳秒脉冲激光产生的光子在石墨烯基面上启动纳米孔的原子钻探，从而高效、可控地制备多孔石墨烯骨架。主要的研究目标是建立对光子使能原子钻探过程中形成多孔石墨烯骨架的机制的基本理解。我们将建立一个计算模型来预测激光加工参数对光子激活键激发和离解的影响。将进行显微组织表征和电化学性能测试，以建立工艺-结构-性能之间的关系。这项研究对基于光子的制造技术开发做出了贡献。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Supercapacitors have emerged as next-generation high-performance power sources for portable devices used in a wide range of consumer, biomedical, healthcare, and military applications. It remains a fundamental challenge in supercapacitor design to simultaneously achieve high energy and power densities with a long cycle life. A porous graphene framework, consisting of a three-dimensional graphene structure containing nano-sized holes and micro-size pores, has emerged as a promising solution to address this challenge due to its superior electrochemical properties. However, the existing methods for fabricating this graphene framework often rely on thermal chemical etching processes, which suffer from low efficiency and poor controllability due to complex experiments and poor thermal stability of etchants. This award supports fundamental research to provide knowledge for the development of a novel manufacturing strategy using photon-material interactions to realize porous graphene framework fabrication with a high efficiency. This research will have significant broader impact because of the spillover into literally all economic sectors because of the potential transformative performance improvement of supercapacitors. This project also provides an integrated science and engineering training platform for graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students, with particular emphasis on promoting participation of women and underrepresented students in research.The goal of this project is to establish a novel photon-enabled atomic drilling process to fabricate porous graphene frameworks toward supercapacitor applications. The photon-enabled atomic drilling approach utilizes photons from a nanosecond pulsed laser to initiate atomic drilling of nanoholes in the graphene basal planes for porous graphene framework fabrication with high efficiency and controllability. The major research objective is to establish a fundamental understanding of mechanisms involved in the photon-enabled atomic drilling process responsible for the formation of porous graphene frameworks. A computational model capable of predicting photon-enabled bond excitation and dissociation as affected by the laser processing parameters will be developed. Microstructure characterization and electrochemical property testing will be conducted to establish the process-structure-property relationship. This research contributes to advances in photon-based manufacturing technology development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.