Three-dimensional cheese-like carbon nanoarchitecture with tremendous surface area and pore construction derived from corn as superior electrode materials for supercapacitors

摘要

Highly porous carbon nanoarchitectures (HPCNs) were derived from biomass materials, namely, corn fibers (CF), corn leafs (CL), and corn cobs (CC). We surprisingly found that by a very simple activation process the CF, CL, and CC materials can be transformed into exciting two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) carbon nanoarchitectures with excellent physicochemical properties. FESEM and HRTEM results confirmed a three different carbon forms (such as foams-like carbon, carbon sheets with several holes and cheese-like carbon morphology) of HPCNs. Huge surface area (2394-3475 m(2)/g) with excellent pore properties of HPCNs was determined by BET analysis. Well condensed graphitic plans of HPCNs were confirmed by XRD, XPS and Raman analyses. As an electrode material, HPCNs demonstrated a maximum specific capacitance (Cs) of 575 F/g in 1.0 M H2SO4 with good stability over 20,000 cycles. The CC-700 degrees C showed a tremendous Cs of 375 Fig even at 20000th cycles. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest Cs by the biomass derived activated carbons in aqueous electrolytes. The CC-700 degrees C exhibited excellent charge-discharge behavior at various current densities (0.5-10A g(-1)). Notably, CC-700 degrees C demonstrated an excellent Cs of 207 Fig at current density of 10 A g(-1). An extraordinary change-discharge behavior was noticed at low current density of 0.5 A g(-1). (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.