Sustainable design of high-performance multifunctional carbon electrodes by one-step laser carbonization for supercapacitors and dopamine sensors

Journal
Nanoscale  
Volume
16
Issue
17
Start Page
8627
End Page
8638
Citation
Nanoscale 16 (17): 8627-8638 (2024)
Publisher DOI
10.1039/d4nr00588k
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85190332673
ISSN
20403364
Laser carbonization is a rapid method to produce functional carbon materials for electronic devices, but many typical carbon precursors are not sustainable and/or require extensive processing for electrochemical applications. Here, a sustainable concept to fabricate laser patterned carbon (LP-C) electrodes from biomass-derived sodium lignosulfonate, an abundant waste product from the paper industry is presented. By introducing an adhesive polymer interlayer between the sodium lignosulfonate and a graphite foil current collector, stable, abrasion-resistant LP-C electrodes can be fabricated in a single laser irradiation step. The electrode properties can be systematically tuned by controlling the laser processing parameters. The optimized LP-C electrodes demonstrate a promising performance in supercapacitors and electrochemical dopamine biosensors. They exhibit high areal capacitances of 38.9 mF cm<sup>−2</sup> in 1 M H<inf>2</inf>SO<inf>4</inf> and high energy and power densities of 4.3 μW h cm<sup>−2</sup> and 16 mW cm<sup>−2</sup> in 17 M NaClO<inf>4</inf>, showing the best performance among biomass-derived LP-C materials reported so far. After 20 000 charge/discharge cycles, they retain a high capacitance of 81%. Dopamine was linearly detected in the range of 0.1 to 20 μM with an extrapolated limit of detection of 0.5 μM (S/N = 3) and high sensitivity (13.38 μA μM<sup>−1</sup> cm<sup>−2</sup>), demonstrating better performance than previously reported biomass-derived LP-C dopamine sensors.
DDC Class
600: Technology