SBIR Phase I: Eco-friendly Production of Carbon Nanosheets for Ultra High Energy Storage Electrode Application

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is applying a plant-based graphene product as a battery material to increase energy storage density, decrease charging times and extend battery life. The benefit to society is that the plant-based material may facilitate adoption of electric vehicles and reduce the grid storage cost of renewable energy, potentially providing greater energy security. The proposed material's cost-efficient nature will facilitate broader adoption of graphene in other advanced technology areas such as composites, conductive inks, printable electronics, catalysis, sensors, and biomedical devices, thereby pushing nanotechnology frontiers. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a green sustainable process using an abundant plant material as input and producing extremely high purity graphene with superior physical attributes. This feasibility research will demonstrate that high-quality SP2Hybrid graphene can be manufactured from a plant-based raw material at lower costs than current methods of graphene production and is environmentally sustainable. Current production of graphene, such as liquid/chemical exfoliation, uses starting materials derived from non-renewable resources. The proposed process utilizes an abundant cassava crop as feedstock sold as commodity in the US and overseas. Preliminary samples of SP2Hybrid graphene properties have been validated by third parties to have 4X the surface area (2956 m2/g) and up to 5X (5.0 cm3/g) the pore volume of current solutions, offering better performance as an electrode material in batteries and supercapacitors. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.