Novel puffball (Lycoperdon Sp.) spores derived hierarchical nanostructured Biocarbon: A preliminary investigation on thermochemical conversion and characterization for supercapacitor applications

Abstract

Puffball (Lycoperdon Sp.) spores were effectively explored as a new class of renewable feedstock for the synthesis of hierarchical nanostructured biocarbon. The systematic characterization of the puffball spores and their derived biocarbon material indicates the effective retention of their hierarchical structure during the carbonization with minimum size shrinkage. The derived biocarbon found to have a uniform size ranging from 2.6 to 3 µm with nanostructured hierarchical morphology and the specific surface area of 51.5 m2/g. The preliminary investigation on their application potential is explored for the energy storage application. The fabricated symmetric supercapacitor using the puffball spores derived biocarbon electrodes showed the specific capacitance of 33 F/g at 1 A/g and the capacitance retention of 96.2% after 1000 cycles.