Sansevieria trifasciata biomass-derived activated carbon by supercritical-CO2 route: Electrochemical detection towards carcinogenic organic pollutant and energy storage application

Abstract

Activated carbon (AC) has been widely used for electrochemical applications, such as electrochemical sensors, energy storage applications, etc., due to its fine porous structure, volumetric capacitance, and chemical stability. Supercritical-CO2 (SC-CO2) has a fascinating advantage in material science due to its microbubble cavitation, high diffusivity, and high permeability. In the shed of light, we developed a high porous Sansevieria trifasciata biomass-derived AC by SC-CO2 (SC-ST-AC). For comparison purposes, the AC was also prepared in a conventional approach (C-ST-AC). The prepared ACs were characterized through various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques to study their surface morphological character, structural analysis, and phase purity. The electrochemical performance was evaluated by two different applications: electrochemical detection and energy storage application. Based on the results, the SC-ST-AC exhibits higher porous architecture in their morphology and high phase purity with amorphous nature than C-ST-AC. In the preliminary electrochemical analysis, SC-ST-AC achieved higher performance than C-ST-AC. Thus, SC-ST-AC is applied to the real-time application and it exposed a superior limit of detection (0.005 μM L−1) and sensitivity (0.854 μA μM−1 cm−2) towards MA sensing and higher specific capacitance (342.5 F/g for 2 A/g) with 92.09 % of retention at high current density. Thereby, we suggest the SC-CO2 method is a promising approach to develop a highly porous carbon material with excellent electrochemical performance.