Supercapacitor technology offers potential solutions to the energy crisis due to its low cost and outstanding charging and discharging characteristics of electrical energy. Thus, there has been a continuous growth of supercapacitor literature that focuses on the development of new materials to attain high supercapacitance values. Unfortunately, most of these materials are not environmentally friendly and contain heavy metals. We aim to develop highly efficient, inexpensive, and eco-friendly carbon-based materials for supercapacitor applications. In this regard, we utilize various natural resources such as used tea, molasses and corn as an inexpensive and renewable carbon precursor. To enhance the conductivity, these materials are doped with heteroatoms (not heavy metal) like nitrogen, phosphorus, or silicon, etc. using a simple microwave assisted method. Various mole ratio of different doping elements into carbon materials are employed to tune the conductivity, pore sizes and electrochemical behavior of the compounds. These materials are thoroughly characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to determine elemental composition, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) for surface area analysis, and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to investigate the size and shape of the material. Changes in the conductivity value after doping of these materials are also recorded. To understand their performance as supercapacitor, electrochemical measurements are performed in acidic media, basic media and in the presence of ionic liquids at different scan rates. The results of specific capacitance, and current density are compared with mole ratio of the doping element, pore size and surface area. This study helps to design new optimized supercapacitor material in future.<br/>

Synthesis, characterization, and application of novel materials

255th National Meeting (2018)

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