Fabrication of Activated Porous Carbon Using Polymer Decomposition for Electrical Double-Layer Capacitors

Abstract

Because of their excellent stability and highly specific surface area, carbon based materials have received attention as electrode materials of electrical double-layer capacitors(EDLCs). Biomass based carbon materials have been studied for electrode materials of EDLCs; these materials have low capacitance and high-rate performance. We fabricated tofu based porous activated carbon by polymer dissolution reaction and KOH activation. The activated porous carbon(APC-15), which has an optimum condition of 15 wt%, has a high specific surface area(1,296.1 m2 g−1), an increased average pore diameter(2.3194 nm), and a high mesopore distribution(32.4 %), as well as increased surface functional groups. In addition, APC has a high specific capacitance(195 F g−1) at low current density of 0.1 A g−1 and excellent specific capacitance(164 F g−1) at high current density of 2.0 A g−1. Due to the increased specific surface area, volume ratio of mesopores, and surface functional groups, the specific capacitance and high-rate performance increased. Consequently, the tofu based activated porous carbon can be proposed as an electrode material for high-performance EDLCs.