Organic molecules assisted synthesis of carbon nanofibers with controlled surface area for high-performance supercapacitors

Abstract

Abstract Fabricating carbon materials with required specific surface area (SSA) is critical for electrical double layer capacitors (EDLCs). Here we develop a simple and general immersing strategy to fabricate carbon nanofibers (CNFs) with tunable surface area (T-CNFs). Among them, bacterial cellulose (BC) fibers are used as carbon precursor and the organic macromolecules adsorbed by BC are the key factor which decides the SSA of T-CNFs. The T-CNFs samples display the largest SSA of 589.2 m2 g−1. Furthermore, the adsorbed organic matter can modify the surface of CNFs. Compared with the seriously shrunk pure BC; the BC/molecules keep their interconnected networks structure after carbonization which exhibit great potential for supercapacitors. In three-electrode system, the T-CNFs-3 electrode exhibits a high specific capacitance which 4 times that of the T-CNFs-0 electrode, and a long cycling life (about 4% capacitance decay after 5000 cycles). Moreover, the assembled symmetric device (T-CNFs-3//T-CNFs-3) displays a high specific energy of 7.7 Wh kg−1 at the specific power of 325 W kg−1.