Effects of Cyclic Structure of Ammonium Ions on Capacitance in Electrochemical Double Layer Supercapacitors

The conductivity of the electrolyte used plays a critical role in the optimization of the performance of electrochemical double layer capacitors. However, when the difference in the conductivities of different electrolytes is not significant (only 10-20%), the conductivity has little effect on the capacitance. On the other, unlike the conductivity and viscosity of the electrolyte, the cation size directly influences the capacitance. Cyclic ions have a smaller effective radius than that of the corresponding acyclic ions because the acyclic alkyl groups have a greater number of conformational degrees of freedom, such as the rotational, bending, and stretching modes. Consequently, because of the smaller effective size of the cyclic ions, cells containing electrolytes with such ions exhibit higher capacitances than do those with their acyclic counterparts.