Célia Clementz PhD defense
Grafting on porous material
Maandag 26 oktober, 14u00

Condensed Matter and Electroactive Systems (MaCSE) team
Abstract
This PhD thesis focuses on the development of electrodes to achieve higher-performance supercapacitors.
Supercapacitors are energy storage devicesused to rapidly store large amounts of energy. Generally, supercapacitor electrodes are made of porous materials, as a larger surface area leads to a higher storage capacity. However, these devices cannot store large amounts of energy compared to batteries.
To improve their performance, we chose to modify the surface of porous carbons. To ensure a robust modification, we used aryl diazonium salt chemistry. These compounds spontaneously reduce on carbon surfaces to form a covalent bond.
The molecule selected as a graft throughout this manuscript is nthraquinone, an electrochemically active molecule capable of transferring two electrons, hereby maximizing the energy density of the resulting materials.
To characterize the modified materials, several surface analysis techniques were used, including X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), nitrogen adsorption, and cyclic voltammetry.
Jury
Nathalie JOB, Professor, University of Liège / Reviewer
Jean-Marc NOEL, Chargé de recherche CNRS, ITODYS / Reviewer
Conchi ANIA, Research Director, CEMHTI / Examiner
Fannie ALLOIN, CNRS Research Director, LEPMI / Examiner
Charles COUGNON, Research Director, Moltech Anjou / Examiner
Supervisors
Yann LEROUX, CNRS Researcher, University of Rennes, ISCR
Corinne LAGROST, CNRS Research Director, University of Rennes, ISCR
Contacts
Célia CLEMENTZ, celia.clementz@univ-rennes.fr
Yann LEROUX, yann.leroux@univ-rennes.fr
Corinne LAGROST, corinne.lagrost@univ-rennes.fr