Sustainable biomass-based hierarchical porous carbon for energy storage: A novel route to maintain electrochemically attractive natural structure of precursor
By Luo, Min; Zhu, Ziqi; Yang, Kai; Yang, Pei; Miao, Yingchun; Chen, Minzhi; Chen, Weimin; Zhou, Xiaoyan
Published in Science of The Total Environment
Science of The Total Environment
2020
Abstract
The development of sustainable and renewable energy storage devices with low cost and environment friendly features is an extremely urgent issue that needs to be solved. Herein, low-cost and sustainable biomass chitin, possessing natural fibrous, O/N-enriched and porous structure, was employed as a porous carbon (PC) precursor. However, a huge challenge in PC preparation is to maintain the natural electrochemically attractive structure of chitin while obtaining highly porous structure. In this study, by utilizing the molten protecting effect and micropore-creating ability of CuCl2 2H2O, the obtained PCs maintain the natural structure, achieve high yield (46%), and simultaneously develop hierarchical pores with a specific surface area range of 1635