Electrochemical energy storage and glucose sensing applications of transition metal oxide nanomaterials

Abstract

The rapid growth in the global economy, commercial markets in electric vehicles, portable electronic products, and fossil fuels have created an apparent voracious demand for high-performance energy storage devices (ESDs). However, it seems difficult to meet the increasingly higher standards of demands by using the current energy conversation or storage devices alone, such as lithium-ion batteries or fuel cells [1]. Supercapacitors (SCs) are the emerging devices that are capable of managing high power rates compared to batteries. Though supercapacitors have many-fold higher power density it has 3-30 times lower energy density as compared to batteries. The high power density advantage factor makes supercapacitors suitable for the applications in power busts which do not require high charge storage. Supercapacitors along with the battery can serve well for the devices which require both energy as well as power density. Fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors are the unconventional energy storage devices that work on the principle of electrochemical conversions. Supercapacitors store charges as conventional capacitors but in the absence of dielectric material. The capacitors consist of dielectric plates for electrostatic storage of charges whereas supercapacitors consist of two electrodes dipped in an electrolyte separated by a separator allowing the diffusion of electrolytic ions but restricting the establishment of direct contact between the electrodes.