Abstract
In the present investigation, we report the incorporation of phosphorous (P) atoms in the activated carbon and study its effect on the electrochemical performance. Porous carbon is synthesized by the chemical activation method from a bioresource and then pretreated with nitric acid. Phosphorus atoms were doped by the simple chemical method. The obtained phosphorous-doped nano-materials show an appreciable change of porosity and creation of a more wide range of meso- and macropores, and this affects their adsorption and electrochemical performance. The electrochemical study shows that doped carbon obtained at 850 °C (ACtP-850) delivers the maximum specific capacitance (328 Fg−1) in neutral aqueous electrolyte (1 M Na2SO4). The doped carbon material not only exhibits good cycling performance but also the highest specific energy of 29 Wh kg−1 corresponding to a specific power of 646 W kg−1. The improved capacitive performance of phosphorous-doped porous carbon material proposes its use in energy storage applications.
Highlights
Electrochemical capacitors (ECs) or supercapacitors are favorable for many applications demanding a large fast pulse of power and high energy with fast repetitive recharging due to their unique power density and excellent cycling ability comparative to other power storage devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
Diffraction analysis of the materials was performed in the range of 10o to 80o to observe the relative changes in the crystal structure of porous carbon after nitric acid treatment where β002 denotes the full width at half-width of (002) diffraction peak. 8.846 nm crystallite size and 0.3524 nm layer spacing are obtained for pure carbon (AC)
The phosphorus doping increases the layer spacing and crystallite size and this is favorable for the transportation of the electrolyte ions which further leads to the enhancement in supercapacitive performance [5, 8, 44, 45]
Summary
Electrochemical capacitors (ECs) or supercapacitors are favorable for many applications demanding a large fast pulse of power and high energy with fast repetitive recharging due to their unique power density and excellent cycling ability comparative to other power storage devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Different forms of carbon comprising carbon nanotubes, activated carbon, templated porous carbons, carbon spheres, and graphene have high gravimetric surface areas [21,22,23,24,25,26,27] These kinds of electrodes can provide very high specific capacitance value as high as 250 F g−1. In their work reported a low value (200 F cm−3) of volumetric capacitance for the graphene-based supercapacitor electrodes. To improve their capacitive performance, Yang et al [14] recently reported an increase in the packing density of graphene films (0.13–1.3 g cm−3) which yielded a Cvol of 255.5 F cm−3. By performing the electrochemical performance measurements, it can be stated that the doped material shows great potential to be a promising additive for supercapacitor applications
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