Abstract

Power crisis is the great concern in electrical charge storage devices. Electrochemical energy storage devices such as supercapacitors are the alternative power sources. Nanoporous gold film is the promising material for supercapacitor current collector fabrication. Nanoporous gold has recently become a desirable material in the field of analytical chemistry. This conductive material has an open, 3D porous structure consisting of nano sized pores with surface areas that are 100s to 1000s of times larger than planar gold of an equivalent surface area. The high surface area tied with an open pore network arrangement makes nanoporous gold a perfect support for the development of supercapacitor. Important features include conductivity, high surface area, ease of preparation and adaptation, tunable pore size, and a continuous open pore network. Nanoporous current collector for supercapacitor is prepared by dealloying Au:Cu alloys. Surface analysis and characterisation are performed by using SEM, FESEM and EDAX analysis. Mathematical modelling of impedance response for a nanoporous current collector is derived and equivalent circuit is also obtained. This current collector can store more charge carriers for large number of charging /discharging cycles and can be used in portable, high power applications.