Graphene synthesized on porous silicon for active electrode material of supercapacitors

We present graphene synthesized by chemical vapour deposition under atmospheric pressure on both porous nanostructures and flat wafers as electrode scaffolds for supercapacitors. A 3nm thin gold layer was deposited on samples of both porous and flat silicon for exploring the catalytic influence during graphene synthesis. Micro-four-point probe resistivity measurements revealed that the resistivity of porous silicon samples was nearly 53 times smaller than of the flat silicon ones when all the samples were covered by a thin gold layer after the graphene growth. From cyclic voltammetry, the average specific capacitance of porous silicon coated with gold was estimated to 267 μF/cm² while that without catalyst layer was 145μF/cm². We demonstrated that porous silicon based on nanorods can play an important role in graphene synthesis and enable silicon as promising electrodes for supercapacitors.