Construction of 'fungi house': an architectural approach for fabrication of carbon microspheres with superior capacitive and salt removal performance

摘要

Microsized carbon spheres with the refined interior structure are highly desired, while it is challenging to achieve controllability limited to synthetic strategy. Herein, a novel architectural approach is proposed for developing interior multi-chamber carbon microspheres (MCMs) with the help of a liquid template. We focus on building "rooms" in fruit wine yeast and yielding "fungi house," which apply to other kinds of yeast. The size and number of the "room" can be controlled. To the best of our knowledge, such biomass-derived carbon spheres with defined interior structures have never been reported yet. When used as electrodes for supercapacitors and capacitive deionization, the exemplified MCM exhibits specific capacitance 339.31 F g(-1) at 0.5 A g(-1) and a salt adsorption capacity of 21.61 mg g(-1) at 1.2 V, as well as excellent rate performance and cycle stability. Given the structure-dependent property, the architectural approach broadens the avenue to develop advanced materials.