Fatsia Japonica-Derived Hierarchical Porous Carbon for Supercapacitors With High Energy Density and Long Cycle Life.

Huiling Li,Kunming Liu,Feng Wang,Changtong Mei,Lihua Cao,Meng Yang,Shaohua Jiang,Gaigai Duan,Wenhui Xu,Guoying Zhang

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00089

Abstract

Fatsia Japonica seed, which is mainly composed of glucose, has potential as a porous carbon matrix precursor for supercapacitors that can achieve high-value utilization. Cost-effective hierarchical porous carbon materials (HPC) were prepared from Fatsia Japonica by annealing at high temperature. The pore size and distribution of the HPC can be precisely controlled and adjusted by altering the activation temperature. The HPC obtained at 600°C showed favorable features for electrochemical energy storage, with a surface area of 870.3 m2/g. The HPC for supercapacitors (a three-electrode system) exhibited good specific capacitance of 140 F/g at a current density of 1 A/g and a long cycling life stability (87.5% remained after 10,000 cycles). In addition, the HPC electrode showed an excellent energy density of 23 Wh/Kg. Such hierarchical porous biomass-derived carbon would be a good candidate for application in the electrodes of supercapacitors due to its simple preparation process and the outstanding electrochemical performance.

Highlights

With the development of modern social science and technology and the increasing energy demand for power, a new generation of energy devices with advanced, low cost, and sustainable sources have attracted great attention from industry, including supercapacitors (SCs), Li-ion batteries (LIBs), and fuel cells (Shao et al, 2018; Ma et al, 2019; Lei et al, accepted)
The formation process of hierarchical porous carbon materials (HPC) from the seeds of Fatsia Japonica is illustrated in Scheme 1
The fresh seeds were pre-treated with hydrochloric acid (HCl) to remove the inorganic substances preliminarily and pre-carbonized at a low temperature (300◦C) to remove other organic substances

Summary

INTRODUCTION

With the development of modern social science and technology and the increasing energy demand for power, a new generation of energy devices with advanced, low cost, and sustainable sources have attracted great attention from industry, including supercapacitors (SCs), Li-ion batteries (LIBs), and fuel cells (Shao et al, 2018; Ma et al, 2019; Lei et al, accepted). Biomass-Derived Carbon for Supercapacitors widely commercialized as active materials for SCs on the basis of their controllable porosity, high specific surface area, and electrochemical stability, but the dramatic drawback of commercial EDLC is a relatively low energy density in the range of 5–10 Wh/Kg (Borenstein et al, 2017; Zhao et al, 2019a; Wang et al, 2020). The symmetric supercapacitor displayed high energy density of 34.3 Wh/Kg at a power density of 800 W/Kg. the prepared porous carbon materials with heteroatom- doping can obviously improve electrochemical performance. A facile method involving pre-carbonization at low temperature and subsequent pyrolysis and activation with KOH at high temperatures was developed to fabricate hierarchical porous carbon materials (HPCs) derived from Fatsia Japonica. Where m (g) is the total mass of the active material

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT