Nitrogen-doped porous carbon as-mediated by a facile solution combustion synthesis for supercapacitor and oxygen reduction electrocatalyst

Abstract

Porous carbon has attracted great interest because of its distinctive structure and superior properties for designing electrochemical energy storage devices. In this work, we report a novel and facile method to fabricate nitrogen-doped porous carbon (NPC) with designed hierarchical multi-porous structure. The NPC is prepared using a facile and scalable MgO template method as-mediated by a magnesium nitrate-glycine solution combustion synthesis (SCS), in which the preparation conditions of calcination temperature and glycine-nitrate ratio are carefully studied. The NPC shows a high specific surface area up to 1958 m2 g−1 and contains hierarchical multi-pores of interconnected macro-, meso- and micro-pores. When applied as ORR electrocatalyst, the NPC-n2-1000 sample shows the highest activity, good durability and high tolerance against methanol, which is among the best reported carbon-base catalysts. The NPC samples also shows great potential as the active electrode material for supercapacitors. NPC-n2-900 sample exhibits a high specific capacitance of 232 F g−1 at 1 A g−1 in 6 M KOH electrolyte, a superior rate capability (205 F g−1 at 10 A g−1) and a good cycling performance. The present work demonstrates that the combination of glycine-nitrate SCS and template introduction in one-step can turn the carbohydrate fuel to advanced porous carbon with prospective applications in high-performance energy storage devices.