Porous Cotton-derived Carbon: Synthesis, Microstructure and Supercapacitive Performance

doi:10.15541/jim20170164

Abstract

Abstract:

Biomass materials were widely used to synthesize porous carbon for energy storages considering the simple preparation method and wide availability of raw materials. Herein, we prepared nitrogen doped porous carbon from natural cotton via a simple one-step eco-friendly method. The cotton-derived carbon material delivers a maximum specific surface area of 480 m²/g and a high nitrogen content of 6.84% at the carbonization temperature of 750℃. The obtained material shows excellent performance when used as supercapacitor electrode materials, which exhibits a maximal specific capacitance of 252 F/g at 1 A/g in 1 mol/L H₂SO₄ electrolyte and retains 94% of the capacitance after 10,000 cycles at 15 A/g. The good performance of the low-cost carbon electrode made from cotton provides a potential application for electrochemical capacitors.

Key words: cotton, porous carbon, supercapacitor

CLC Number:

TQ174

HAO Yan-Xia, QIAN Meng, XU Ji-Jian, BI Hui, HUANG Fu-Qiang. Porous Cotton-derived Carbon: Synthesis, Microstructure and Supercapacitive Performance[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2018, 33(1): 93-99.

Figures/Tables 10

Fig. 1 (a) Schematic synthesis of cotton-derived carbon samples and SEM images of PC (b) and CDC-750 (c)

Fig. 2 TEM images of CDC-750

Fig. 3 N2 absorption-desorption isotherm (a) and pore size distribution (b) of PC and CDC samples

Fig. 4 Raman spectra (a) and XPS spectra (b) of all the samples, C1s peak of CDC-750 (c) and N1s peak of CDC-750 (d)

Table 1 Porous properties and elements composition of the obtained samples

Sample	S_BET/(m²•g^-1)	V_t^I/(m³•g^-1)	V_m^II/(m³•g^-1)	N/%	(N-5)/%	(N-6)/%	(N-Q)/%
PC	397	0.1312	0.1312	/	/	/	/
CDC-550	403	0.2682	0.1127	6.15	28.65	25.47	45.88
CDC-650	460	0.2619	0.1403	6.52	32.53	25.31	42.16
CDC-750	480	0.2458	0.1576	6.84	47.14	20.98	31.88

Fig. 5 (a) GCD curves of samples at a current density of 1 A/g, (b) CV curves of CDC-750 at different scan rates, (c) specific capacitance of CDC-750 at different current densities, (d) EIS spectra of the obtained samples, (e) cycle performance of CDC-750 at a current density of 15 A/g, and (f) Ragone plot of symmetrical cell structure of CDC-750

Fig. S1 SEM image of the raw cotton material

Fig. S2 SEM images of CDC-550 (a) and CDC-650 (b)

Fig. S3 N1s peak CDC-550 (a) and CDC-650 (b)

Fig. S4 CV curves of CDC-750 at different scan rates for symmetrical cell

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