Hydrothermal synthesis of Boron -doped porous carbon from Azadirachta Indica wood for supercapacitor application

Abstract

• The activated carbon as derived from Azadirachta Indica wood which is available in dry and wet land worldwide. • Derived carbon has excellent porous structure. • B-AIAC delivers good specific capacitance. • Flexible asymmetric supercapacitor has better energy density and a power density. Natural bio waste Azadirachta Indica wood produces highly microporous carbon material by a simple one-step process using KOH as a precursor for activation of carbon and boric acid as a boron source for doping boron with Activated Carbon. Boric acid is added to the carbon frame work, which not only incorporates some boron but also enhances the carbon based materials specific surface area. The prepared B-doped microporous carbon possesses a huge surface area (1503.7 m 2 /g) and numerous strongly interconnected micropores due to the nanostructured boron doping. This boron doped carbon material has a high specific capacitance of 285.6 Fg −1 at 1Ag −1 , and better cyclic performance with 98% retention after 5000 cycles, due to the synergetic effect of huge surface area and highly developed distribution of pore size. The developed flexible asymmetric supercapacitor has an energy density of 87.7 Whkg −1 and a power density of 4000 WKg −1 . Evidently, this work paves the way for worthy recycling of biowaste materials by providing a simple and cost-effective pathway for synthesizing functionalized biowaste-based carbon materials.