Post-treatment-free synthesis of highly mesoporous carbon for high-performance supercapacitor in aqueous electrolytes

Exploring well-defined pore structure with high porosity has been a long-pursued goal for the development of porous carbon as high-performance supercapacitor electrodes. The pursuit of high surface area while maintaining uniform pore size remains a formidable challenge because their current template-directed synthetic processes are quite complex and time consuming. Here, we report herein a facile and post-treatment-free approach for synthesis of carbon materials with simultaneously high surface area and uniform mesopore size. The key to this preparation strategy is utilization of poly-tetrafluoroethylene that can in-situ generate hydrofluoric acid to etch out the silica templates during carbonization process. This strategy not only reduces synthesis procedure by combining post-silica-removal and carbonization in a single step, but also eliminates the direct usage of hazardous hydrofluoric acid or corrosive sodium hydroxide. The as-synthesized disordered mesoporous carbon presents higher Langmuir surface area (3257 m(2) g(-1)), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area (2302 m(2) g(-1)) and mesopore rate (99.6%) when compared to traditional mesoporous carbon. With combination of high surface area and uniform mesopore size, the mesoporous carbon exhibits attractive capacitive properties in aqueous electrolytes, including large capacitance of 201 F g(-1), high energy density of 28.3 Wh kg(-1) and excellent cycling stability. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.