Porous Carbon Materials for Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

During the past few decades, porous carbon materials have gained significant attention due to its large specific surface area (SSA), high electrochemical stability, excellent electrical conductivity, and industrial scale synthesis through traditional carbonization-activation method. These extraordinary features allow them to be a unique and superior choice for the electrochemical energy storage material. Porous carbon materials having macro-, meso-, and micro-pores are able to accumulate the charge at the carbon/electrolyte interface through a non-faradaic ion adsorption–desorption process. Hence, these materials are employed to construct electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLCs). The electrochemical performances of porous carbon-based supercapacitors greatly depend on the rational design of porous architecture and surface morphology. This chapter systematically outlines the significant advances in the synthetic strategies, different structures of porous carbon materials and the involved charge storage mechanism in EDLCs. Self-doped porous carbon materials from various biomass precursors or doping with heteroatoms like, O, N, S, B during activation process add some more advantages like enhanced wettability due to polarized surface, improved intrinsic conductivity, and better electrochemical performances resulting from the introduction of Faradaic pseudocapacitance of the redox active sites. The structure–activity correlation between porosity, doping species, and electrochemical performances will also be discussed.