Electrochemical Applications of CNT Electrodes

Electrochemical applications of CNTs as electrodes have greatly increased in recent years mainly due to their outstanding properties, such as fast electron-transfer kinetics (high heterogeneous electron-transfer constant, high electroactive surface area, chemical stability and... 

In this chapter, we will focus on CNTs as advanced materials for the design of electrochemical devices. The next section vdll be devoted to review the structure, electronic, chemical and electrochemical properties of CNTs. Section 3.3 will comprise an overview of the synthesis, purification and (bio)functionalization of CNT, as well as the modification of substrates with CNT. In Section 3.4, we will address the electrochemical applications of functionalized CNT electrodes... 

The silicon substrate constitutes a very interesting support for facilitating the integration in microelectronic devices. The electrochemical and electroanalytical fields can gain remarkable benefits from the silicon-based miniaturization devices, especially if arrays of metal electrodes can be fabricated. An understanding of the electrochemical properties of CNTs directly attached to silicon is thus essential for their potential application in developing silicon-based electrochemical or (bio)electrochemical... 

The potential applications of CNTs due to their small dimension and excellent physicochemical properties make them useful in wide ranges from multifunctional composites, electrochemical electrode, and/or additives, field emitters, to nanosized semiconductor devices. Up to now, commercialized fields of CNTs are the filler in anode materials of lithium-ion secondary battery. ... 

Electronically conducting polymers (ECPs) such as polyaniline (PANI), polypyrrole (PPy) and po 1 y(3.4-cthy 1 cncdi oxyth iophcnc) (PEDOT) have been applied in supercapacitors, due to their excellent electrochemical properties and lower cost than other ECPs. We demonstrated that multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) prepared by catalytic decomposition of acetylene in a solid solution are very effective conductivity additives in composite materials based on ECPs. In this paper, we show that a successful application of ECPs in supercapacitor technologies could be possible only in an asymmetric configuration, i.e. with electrodes of different nature. 

CNTs have been one of the most actively studied electrode materials in the past few years due to their unique electronic and mechanical properties. From a chemistry point of view, CNTs are expected to exhibit inherent electrochemical properties similar to other carbon electrodes widely used in various electrochemical applications. Unlike other carbon-based nanomaterials such as C60 and C70 [31], CNTs show very different electrochemical properties. The subtle electronic properties suggest that carbon nanotubes will have the ability to mediate electron transfer reactions with electroactive species in solution when used as the electrode material. Up to now, carbon nanotube-based electrodes have been widely used in electrochemical sensing [32-35], CNT-modified electrodes show many advantages which are described in the following paragraphs. 

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