Carbon nitride template-directed fabrication of nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon for high performance supercapacitors

Facile yet rationally designed strategy for advanced electrode material synthesis is pivotal for energy storage. Herein, we report an protocol for g-C3N4 template-directed in-situ fabricating nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon sheets (NPGCs) by using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed with high-temperature pyrolysis process, which totally avoids the postsynthetic template-removal. The resultant NPGCs integrate a range of intriguing features including highly conductive interconnected structure (693 Sm-1), abundant mesoporous with ultrahigh pore volume (4.35 cm(3) g(-1)), large specific surface area (1277 m(2) g(-1)), high N doping (8.75 wt%), and good wettability. As supercapacitor electrode, the NPGCs exhibit a quite encouraging specific capacitance of 261 F g(-1) at 1 A g(-1), excellent rate capability (189 F g(-1) even at 100 A g(-1)), and outstanding cycle performance (97% capacitance retention at 10 A g(-1) after 20000 cycles), which outperforms most carbon-based materials reported to date. Moreover, the assembled supercapacitors deliver a high power density of 28.4 kW kg(-1) with a energy density of 6.53 Wh kg(-1) at 100 A g(-1). Our work is expected to open up new avenues for developing efficient nitrogen-doped porous carbon materials in a facile and viable way. (c) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.