Mike will be finishing up his engineering degree at Hope College this fall and continuing his work with us throughout the year.  He joined us this summer to work on supercapacitor applications.

Nickel (II) and Copper (II) tetraaminophthalocyanines for Supercapacitor Applications

Michael T Giurini, Kevin Klunder, Thomas F. Guarr

As the world embraces renewable energy sources and moves away from fossil fuels, the demand for efficient ways to store energy has increased substantially.  Supercapacitors can be used to enhance energy efficiency.  While they store less energy than batteries, they can absorb and release it at a much faster rate.  Conductive polymers produced from nickel, copper, and cobalt tetraaminophthalocyanines can be used to fabricate electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLC) with unique electric storage properties.  Using cyclic voltammetry, these compounds can be electropolymerized to form thin films, which can then be conditioned with an annealing process to act as EDLC’s.  Studies to determine the optimal conditions for electropolymerization and conditioning will be reported.  The polymerization and annealing process was tested with various electrolytes, solvents, and electrode surfaces.  Resulting polymer films were analyzed electrochemically and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to determine the impact of these variables on EDLC formation.