Superhigh-rate capacitive performance of heteroatoms-doped double shell hollow carbon spheres

Abstract

The salient practical application feature of an ideal supercapacitor is its ability to deliver high energy density stably even at ultrahigh power density. Therefore, a rational design of electrode materials is essentially required for achieving high current, energy and power densities. In this work, a special “in situ replicating” strategy is employed to fabricate double shell hollow carbon spheres with homogeneously doped heteroatoms. The KOH activation introduces micropores to the thin shells of the hollow carbon spheres. Materials characterizations show that these carbon spheres have such merits as large surface area, easy-accessible micropore surface with faradaic reaction sites, and high conductivity. All these result in ultrafast ion transport from electrolyte to the micropores in the carbon spheres and endow the carbon with outstanding capacitive performance, e.g., an unprecedentedly high specific capacitance of 270Fg−1 at a very high current density of 90Ag−1. Moreover, a high energy density of 11.9Whkg−1 at a respectable power density of 30,000Wkg−1 is achieved in 6M KOH electrolyte.