Controlled Fabrication of Interconnected Porous Carbon Nanosheets for Supercapacitors with a Long Cycle Life

The pursuit of promising precursors and simple preparation approaches boosts the development of sustainable carbon-related energy systems. In this work, a relatively low-cost and eco-friendly ternary precursor system is presented for the fabrication of interconnected sheet-structured porous carbon materials by the combination of template-assisted pyrolysis and post-activation. The variation of effect factors permitted the formation of tunable microstructures with multilevel pore channels, and the optimized sample (APC3-700) with multiple desired properties (such as, large surface area, hierarchical interconnected pores, and nitrogen doping) was successfully synthesized. Due to the large electrode/electrolyte interface, short pathway for mass/charge transfer, high electrochemical activity, and low transport resistance, APC3-700 proved to be a favorable material with high capacitance (225 F g(-1) at 1 Ag-1) and a high rate profile (remaining 91% at 20 Ag-1). In particular, the symmetrical supercapacitor assembled demonstrated a long cycle life with almost no capacitance decaying over 20000 cycles. The method used may be employed for the widespread development of nanosheet-connected carbon materials from different sources for efficient enhancement of energy storage.