Hybrid nanoarchitectonics of ordered mesoporous C60–BCN with high surface area for supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

Mesoporous materials have shown immense potential for their use in energy storage applications due to their unique pore structural features and high surface areas. There is an immense interest in developing high performance electrode materials for the next generation energy storage devices. In this work, ordered mesoporous hybrids of fullerene and borocarbonitride with a high surface area are synthesized using KIT-6 as a hard template. The high surface area and uniform pore size distribution of the hybrids decorated with C60 nanostructures accounted for a high ion charge transfer which led to increased electrochemical stability. The optimized material exhibits exceptional supercapacitance stability of ∼100 % after 6000 cycles at 5 A g−1, with a capacitance of 171.2 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1. The material is also used as anodes in lithium-ion batteries wherein it displays exceptional capacitance retention, storage capacity, coulombic efficiency, and rate capability. The storage capacity of the anode material is found to be 1268.3/1164.9/443.8 mA h g−1 at 0.05/0.1/1 A g−1. The ordered mesoporosity, high surface area, and functionalized surface along with the intermolecular electron transfer enabled due to C60 offers exciting prospects for the material to be used as novel electrode materials.