Agarose-Based Hierarchical Porous Carbons Prepared with Gas-Generating Activators and Used in High-Power Density Supercapacitors

Abstract

Due to their high surface areas and large pore volumes, porous carbons (PCs) are valuable materials for use as electrodes in energy storage and conversion devices. Biomass is an ideal precursor for the preparation of PCs in part because it is sustainable and eco-friendly. Herein, new methodology for converting agarose, a naturally occurring type of biomass that forms robust hydrogels, into PCs with tunable pore structures and high electrochemical performance is described. The synthetic process is straightforward and entails heating a gel that is composed of agarose and potassium oxalate (K2C2O4). Since the salt transforms into gaseous byproducts at elevated temperatures, the decomposition process was harnessed to create activated, open pores as the hydrogel underwent carbonization. For example, a PC with a surface area of 1754.9 m2 g–1 and a pore volume of 2.643 cm3 g–1 was obtained by heating a mixture of agarose and K2C2O4 in a 1:3 weight ratio at 700 °C. The material was subsequently used as the electrode material in a supercapacitor and found to display a specific capacitance of 166.0 F g–1 at 0.125 A g–1. Varying the quantity of added K2C2O4 resulted in predictable changes in porosity and thus offered a means to tune the textural properties and the electrochemical performance of the PCs. For example, changing the feed ratio of agarose to K2C2O4 to 1:6 afforded a PC that exhibited a high persistent specific capacitance (64.1 F g–1 at 5 A g–1 after 10,000 cycles) and a high-power density (20 kW kg–1 at 10 A g–1).