Facile synthesis of mesoporous carbon from furfuryl alcohol-butanol system by EISA process for supercapacitors with enhanced rate capability

A smart, efficient and cost-effective strategy using modified evaporation induced self-assembly (EISA) is employed to synthesize mesoporous carbon (MC) with excellent textural parameters. Furfuryl alcohol is utilized as an alternative source of carbon precursor for the first time in EISA process in place of conventional EISA precursor, namely resol. Further n-Butanol, used as a co-structure directing agent during synthesis plays a crucial role in formation of a high surface area mesoporous carbon. The resulting carbon synthesized by modified EISA process shows a high specific surface area with large pore volume and more of ordered graphitic carbon. Wettability studies reveal that the surface functionalized mesoporous carbon film surface exhibits superior hydrophilic properties in comparison with non-functionalized mesoporous carbon film surface. It delivers a high specific capacitance of 151 F g(-1) at a high current density of 50 A g(-1) and shows excellent rate capability with 93% capacitance retention. It also exhibits good cyclic stability with capacitance retention of 96% after 10,000 cycles and delivers a stable energy density of 2.7 W h kg(-1) by retaining a power density of 2516 W kg(-1). The excellent electro-chemical performance of mesoporous carbon reported in the present study is attributed to the presence of high surface area of MC with large interconnected mesopores that allows unhindered flow of the electrolyte ions to the active surface sites. Benchmark studies reveal that the electro-chemical performance of mesoporous carbon being reported in this study is better than carbon electrode based commercial supercapacitors. Thus, the simple and unique strategy employed in the present study can be extended to synthesize carbon materials for other energy storage applications. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.