Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon derived from a chitosan/polyethylene glycol blend for high performance supercapacitors

Abstract

Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon (NHPC) materials were synthesized by using a chitosan/polyethylene glycol (PEG) blend as raw material through a facile carbonization-activation process. In this method, chitosan was used as a nitrogen-containing carbon precursor, low cost and large-scale commercial PEG was employed as a porogen. The physical and electrochemical properties of the resultant NHPC were affected by the ratio of chitosan and PEG. The sample obtained by the ratio of 3:2 exhibits a high specific surface area (2269 m2 g-1), moderate nitrogen doping (3.22 at%) and optimized pore structure. It exhibits a high specific capacitance of 356 F g-1 in 1 M H2SO4 and 271 F g-1 in 2 M KOH at a current density of 1 A g-1, and over 230 F g-1 can be still retained at a high current density of 20 A g-1 in both electrolytes. Additionally, the assembled symmetric supercapacitors show an excellent cycling stability with 94% (in 1 M H2SO4) and 97% (in 2 M KOH) retention after 10000 cycles at 1 A g-1. These results indicate that the chitosan/PEG blend can act as a novel and appropriate precursor to prepare low-cost NHPC materials for high-performance supercapacitors.