In this paper, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and activated carbon (AC) composites (GAC) have been synthesized by a facile chemical method for the capacitive removal of salt ions from brackish water. The as-prepared composites have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy, N 2 adsorptiondesorption and cyclic voltammetry. The GAC composite with 20 wt% graphene (GAC-20) exhibits the best electrochemical performance among all the samples, with a specific capacitance of 181 F g À1 . The electrosorption capacity of the GAC-20 electrode is found to be much higher than that of the AC electrode, indicating that RGO can serve as a flexible bridge to form a ''plane-to-point'' (RGO-to-AC) conducting network, which is beneficial for decreasing the aggregation of AC particles, and improves the electron transfer within the composite electrode. GAC composite should be a promising candidate as an electrode material for capacitive deionization (CDI) applications.
Miniaturization of energy conversion and storage devices has attracted remarkable consideration in the application of wearable electronics. Compared with film-based flexible electronics, fiber-based wearable electronics (e.g., nanogenerator and sensors made from electrospun nanofiber), are more appealing and promising for wearables. However, there are two bottlenecks, low power output, and poor sensing capability, limiting the application of piezoelectric nanofibers. Herein, we integrated zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NRs) to a less known piezoelectric polymer, Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber, forming a ZnO/PAN nano-fabric, which significantly improved the pressure sensitivity and vibrational energy harvesting ability by about 2.7 times compared with the pristine PAN nanofiber, and the maximum output power density of ∼10.8 mW• m -2 is achieved. Noteworthy, the ZnO/PAN nano-fabric showed a power output about twice of the one made of ZnO and polyvinylidene fluride (PVDF). It was revealed that the integration of ZnO NRs clearly improved the planar zig-zag conformation in microstructures of PAN nanofiber. Further, successful demonstrations of a mechanically robust pressure sensor and wearable power source confirms the potential applications in human activity monitoring and personal thermal management, respectively.
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