Journal
NANO ENERGY
Volume 13, Issue -, Pages 709-717Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2015.03.022
Keywords
Pyrolysis; Cellulose; Flow rate; Self-activation; Electrochemical capacitor
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Funding
- Oregon State University
- U.S. Department of Energy from the Vehicle Technologies Office, Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) [DE-AC0206CH11357]
- U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-06CH11357]
- National Science Foundation
- Murdock Charitable Trust
- Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnology Institute (ONAMI)
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Current synthetic methods of biomass-derived activated carbon call for a costly chemical or physical activation process. Herein, we report a simple one-step annealing synthesis yielding a high surface area cellulose-derived activated carbon. We discover that simply varying the flow rate of Argon during pyrolysis enables 'self-activation' reactions that can tune the specific surface areas of the resulting carbon, ranging from 98 m(2)/g to values as high as 2600 m2/g. Furthermore, we, for the first time, observe a direct evolution of H-2 from the pyrolysis, which gives strong evidence towards an in situ self-activation mechanism. Surprisingly, the obtained activated carbon is a crumbled graphene nanostructure composed of interconnected sheets, making it ideal for use in an electrochemical capacitor. The cellulose-derived nanoporous carbon exhibits a capacitance of 132 F g(-1) at 1 A g(-1), a performance comparable to the state-of-the-art activated carbons. This work presents a fundamentally new angle to look at the synthesis of activated carbon, and highlights the importance of a controlled inert gas flow rate during synthesis in general, as its contributions can have a very large impact on the final material properties. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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