Supercapacitors which fully charge or discharge in seconds and which cycle millions of times with minimal performance loss are important for the future of energy storage. Carbon materials have been widely studied as electroactive materials for supercapacitors. A high performance capacitive carbon should simultaneously possess a high surface area, high tap density, electrical conductivity and good wettability to the electrolyte. However, these features are usually incompatible and difficult to integrate into a single carbon material. We report a new method to prepare capacitive carbons with all of the above-mentioned characteristics, using volatile metal inorganic salts as dynamic porogens and amino acids as the carbon precursor. When the amount of inorganic salt allows for stoichiometric coordination by the amino acid, the metal ions are atomically dispersed via the formation of N-M and COO-M bonds. Upon low temperature pyrolysis, the metallic species are gradually reduced and the resulting inorganic salts evaporate, generating uniform ultramicropores. Further pyrolysis at 900 °C causes reduction of the remaining metallic species to metal nanoparticles, which then catalyze the graphitization of carbon. When the amount of the metal salt exceeds the stoichiometric proportion, the molten salt effect occurs at temperatures above 450 °C, resulting in the generation of supermicropores. The resulting carbon has an exceptionally high surface area of 2051 m2 g-1 and 3.22 at% nitrogen content, with a tap density of 0.35 g cm-3. The capacitance of the supercapacitor electrodes reaches 273 F g-1 at 0.5 A g-1. The charge transfer is 0.21 Ω with a cycle life of over 20,000 cycles. The inorganic salt can be recovered and recycled. By comparison with conventional surfactant templating methods, our synthesis opens up a new energy-saving approach for preparing porous carbons with tailored micropore sizes and high surface areas, at temperatures as low as 350 °C.

Use of inorganic dynamic porogens to prepare high-surface-area capacitive carbons with centered micropores

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.