Novel activated N-doped hollow microporous carbon nanospheres from pyrrole-based hyper-crosslinking polystyrene for supercapacitors

Abstract

Here, pyrrole-based hollow microporous organic nanospheres (Py-HMONs) were firstly synthesized through co-hyper-cross-linking of pyrrole and polylactide-b-polystyrene (PLA-b-PS) diblock copolymers based on Scholl reaction. The effect of diblock copolymers and pyrrole amount on the morphology of Py-HMONs was discussed. Py-HMONs can be further transformed into activated N-doped hollow microporous carbon nanospheres (AN-HMCNs) with enhanced high surface area (1347 m2 g−1) by a simply KOH-activated pyrolyzing treatment. Owing to high surface area, unique hollow spherical structure and nitrogen heteratom doping, the obtained AN-HMCNs as supercapacitor electrodes deliver a high specific capacitance of 395 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1. More remarkably, AN-HMCNs electrodes exhibit outstanding cycling stability with almost no decrease over 10000 cycles at a current density of 10 A g−1. This work provide a new avenue to prepare activated hollow porous carbon nanospheres with high surface area and nitrogen-doping for high-performance supercapacitor applications.