Key Words:Carbon;Biomass - Capacitance - Carbonization - Electrodes - Metals - Porous materials - Potassium hydroxide - Supercapacitor
Abstract:With the shortage of energy and increasing environmental pollution, it is urgent to produce cheap and efficient carbon electrode materials for supercapacitors. It is low-cost to obtain carbon materials with porous structure and large surface area from biomass. The special structure of biomass carbon is beneficial for deposition of nano-functional particles and improvement in supercapacitance. In this work, a simple method was applied to carbonization and activation of alkali-treated wheat flour, and a porous carbon with a three-dimensional network structure was obtained. The porous carbon electrode exhibits a high specific capacitance of 161.4 F g<sup>-1</sup> at the current density of 0.5 A g<sup>-1</sup> in 2 M KOH. Further, Co<inf>3</inf>O<inf>4</inf> supported on porous carbon with excellent supercapacitance was synthesized. The composite demonstrates an enhanced specific capacitance of 232.9 F g<sup>-1</sup> under the conditions above, and an excellent capacitance retention capability (80.35%) after 1000 cycles. The results show that the metal oxide supported on biomass-derived porous carbon has great potential application as electrode materials of supercapacitors.<br/> © The Electrochemical Society.
Volume:86
Issue:4
Translation or Not:no