Synergetic effect of swelling and chemical blowing to develop peach gum derived nitrogen-doped porous carbon nanosheets for symmetric supercapacitors

Abstract

Abstract Biomass resources have been regarded as cheap and sustainable precursors to develop functional carbonaceous materials. Herein we report the synthesis of nitrogen doped porous carbon nanosheet material using swelled peach gum as biomass precursor by the KOH activation associated with the chemical blowing of urea. The synergetic effect of swelling and chemical blowing resulted in 2D morphology with an ultrathin thickness, large specific surface area and hierarchical micro/mesoporous structure. The obtained material shows a higher specific capacitance of ∼350 F/g that is much higher than the comparison samples. The assembled aqueous symmetric supercapacitor exhibits a wide voltage window of 0–1.8 V and high energy density of 17.3 Wh/kg at a power density of 450 W/kg. Additionally, good cycling stability of this symmetric cell is demonstrated by the successive 5000 cycles and the 90.3% retention of initial specific capacitance.