Hierarchical porous carbon derived from jujube fruits as sustainable and ultrahigh capacitance material for advanced supercapacitors

Abstract

Herein, we propose a new highly porous natural carbon material from renewable and inexpensive jujube fruits as a carbon source applied in supercapacitors. The combination of pre-carbonization and chemical activation approaches is employed to product hierarchical porous carbon from natural jujube fruits. The specific surface area of the prepared porous carbon is increased from 85.4 to 1135 m2 g−1 after the completion of NaOH activation at an optimized condition, which is beneficial to enhancing electrochemical performance of supercapacitors. A 3-electrode configuration was utilized to explore the electrochemical ability of porous carbon in 6 M KOH electrolyte. The acquired results demonstrate that porous carbon displays the specific capacitance of 587, 460 and 324 F g−1 at 0.1, 1 and 100 A g−1, respectively, which is confirmed by its admirable capacitance and rate behaviors. The porous carbon also shows a wonderful durability with a capacitance retention of 92.2% after 130,000 cycles at 50 A g−1. Moreover, the assembled symmetrical coin-like supercapacitors with wide potential window of 2.5 V in 1 M Et4NBF4/AN organic electrolyte offer a high energy density of 23.7 Wh kg−1 at 0.629 kW kg−1 with remaining 94% capacitance over 10,000 cycles at 30 A g−1, indicating its practical application prospect. As a result, the present study proves the natural jujube fruits is a promising sustainable carbon source for making more economical and efficient electrode material of high performance supercapacitors.