Highly conductive, mechanically robust and multi-purpose carbon aerogel composites derived from waste bread enable high-performance symmetric supercapacitors

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Sustainable biomass-based carbon aerogels have attracted extensive concerns in the area of energy storage and wearable sensory electronics. However, the pristine porosity and low weight of aerogels result in unsatisfactory mechanical and electrical properties, limiting their practical applications. Herein, activated porous carbon (APC), reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and carbon nanoparticles (CNP) are utilized as raw materials to develop a novel type of hierarchically waste bread-derived carbon aerogel via a stepwise activation/calcination strategy. The obtained bread-derived carbon aerogels, named APC-rGO/CNP, exhibits an outstanding electrical conductivity (∼3.23 S cm−1) and a high compressive modulus (∼124.60 MPa) by the synergistic bonding interactions. As a supercapacitor electrode, the APC-rGO/CNP composite manifests an excellent capacitance of 474.8 F g−1 (1.0 A g−1). Furthermore, an all-solid-state symmetric APC-rGO/CNP//APC-rGO/CNP supercapacitor with polyvinyl alcohol/potassium hydroxide (PVA/KOH) gel electrolyte realizes an energy density of 17.4 Wh kg−1 at 895 W kg−1. Notably, even under large compressive stress of 20 kPa, the supercapacitor still achieves a high energy density of 25.6 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 822.8 W kg−1, as well as an excellent capacitance retention of 93.8 % over 10,000 cycles. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of the APC-rGO/CNP composite as a responsive pressure sensor with an ultra-wide detecting span of 0–3 MPa and a moderate sensitivity of 0.22 kPa−1, which can detect keyboard pressing and fist clenching movements distinctively. Overall, the desirable mechanical performances and electrical conductivity of the APC-rGO/CNP composites facilitate the development of versatile nanomaterials to exploit state-of-the-art wearable electronics.