Facile synthesis of nitrogen-doped porous carbons for CO.sub.2 capture and supercapacitors

• Published in: Journal of materials science 2017-09, Vol.52 (17), p.10308
• Main Authors: Wei, Huanming, Qian, Wei, Fu, Ning, Chen, HaiJun, Liu, Jinbao, Jiang, Xinze, Lan, Guoxian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Capacitors; Povidone
• ISSN: 0022-2461; 1573-4803
• DOI: 10.1007/s10853-017-1087-5

Nitrogen-doped porous carbons are attracting considerable attention as adsorbents in CO.sub.2 uptake area or for supercapacitors. In this work, nitrogen-doped porous carbons with a high surface area are efficiently prepared through a facile approach by using polyvinylpyrrolidone as carbon and nitrogen sources through ZnCl.sub.2 activation at 400-700 °C for 4 h under N.sub.2 atmosphere. The obtained nitrogen-doped porous carbons exhibit a narrow microporous structure (0.4-1.0 nm), high specific surface area (up to 1040 m.sup.2 g.sup.-1) and corresponding N content of up to 6.3 wt%. These findings are ascribed to the unique features of high specific surface area and rich N content. Such nitrogen-doped porous carbons show high CO.sub.2 capture of 4.0 mmol g.sup.-1 (0 °C) and 2.5 mmol g.sup.-1 (25 °C), as well as excellent capacitive performance with a specific capacitance of 292 F g.sup.-1 (in 2 M KOH) at a current density of 0.5 A g.sup.-1 and cycling stability. A symmetrical supercapacitor based on NPCs shows high energy density (23.2 W h kg.sup.-1 at 0.5 A g.sup.-1) and good cycle stability (96.8% capacitance retention after 5000 cycles) in symmetric two-electrode systems.