Preparation of activated carbon from willow leaves and evaluation in electric double-layer capacitors

In this paper, willow leaves were used to prepare activated carbons (ACs) by one-step pyrolysis with ZnCl2 activation. The as-prepared AC-1-800 exhibits porous structure with high specific surface area of 1031 m(2) g(-1) and a large pore volume of 0.66 cm(3) g(-1). As a supercapacitor electrode, it shows a good capacitive performance in 6 M of KOH aqueous electrolyte, such as the specific capacitance reaches 216 F g(-1) at a current density of 0.1 A g(-1) and the retention of specific capacitance is 97% after 1000 cycles at 2 A g(-1). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.