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Supercapacitors based on a nitrogen doped hierarchical porous carbon fabricated by self-activation of biomass: excellent rate capability and cycle stability

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Abstract

Energy and environmental are always two major challenges for the sustainable development of the modern human being. For avoiding the serious environmental pollution caused in the fabrication process of porous carbon, a popular energy storage material, we reported a facile, green and activating agent free route hereby directly carbonizing a special biomass, Glebionis coronaria. A nitrogen doped hierarchical porous carbon with a specific surface area of up to 1007 m2 g−1 and a N doping content of up to 2.65 at.% was facilely fabricated by employing the above route. Benefiting from the peculiarly hierarchical porous morphology, enhanced wettability and improved conductivity, the obtained material exhibits superior capacitance performance, which capacitance reaches up to 205 F g−1 under two-electrode configuration, and no capacitance loss is observed after 5000 cycles. Meanwhile, the capacitance retention of the obtained material arrives up to 95.0% even under a high current density of 20 A g−1, illuminating its excellent rate capability. The fabricated nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon with larger capacitance than commercial activated carbon, excellent rate capability and cycle stability is an ideal cost-efficient substitution of commercial activated carbon for supercapacitor application.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51462020 and 21867015), and the Foundation for Innovation Groups of Basic Research in Gansu Province (Grant No. 1606RJIA322).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Zhijian Zhang, Xingchang Tang & Deyi Zhang

  2. College of Petrochemical Technology, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Jingjing He, Yuling Wang, Binbin Yang, Kunjie Wang & Deyi Zhang

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  1. Zhijian Zhang
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  2. Jingjing He
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Zhang, Z., He, J., Tang, X. et al. Supercapacitors based on a nitrogen doped hierarchical porous carbon fabricated by self-activation of biomass: excellent rate capability and cycle stability. Carbon Lett. 29, 585–594 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42823-019-00057-5

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