Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials for high performance supercapacitors

Abstract

Heteroatom-doped carbon materials have considerable potential for applications in energy storage devices (ESDs). In this study, an interconnected B/N/O/P co-doped porous carbon materials (B5-CPPCN-700) was synthesised using a simple one-step method with zinc nitrate hexahydrate and 4′-(4-phosphonylphenyl)−3,2′:6′,3″-terpyridine as raw materials through KOH activation. The as-prepared B5-CPPCN-700 had a large specific surface area, rough surface for ion adsorption, and suitable pore size distribution for electron transport. Moreover, the co-doped B/N/O/P species—particularly the B species—in B5-CPPCN-700 provided active sites and additional pseudocapacitance. These structural and morphological features ensured a high specific capacitance of 503.3 F/g at 0.5 A/g. Furthermore, the assembled symmetric supercapacitor delivered a satisfactory specific energy, specific power (14.98 Wh/kg at 300 W/kg and 6.97 Wh/kg at 22,800 W/kg), and specific capacitance (149.8 F/g at 0.5 A/g and 77.2 F/g at 40 A/g). This study paves the way for the preparation of high-capacitance porous carbon materials for ESDs.