Nitrogen-doped carbon nanofoam derived from amino acid chelate complex for supercapacitor applications

We report a novel strategy to fabricate the nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon nanofoam structures (N-MCNF), derived from magnesium amino acid chelate complex (Mg-acc-complex) for its application towards high performance supercapacitor (SCs) system. A series of N-MCNF with well-connected carbon nanofoam structure have been developed by varying the synthesis temperature. The fabricated N-MCNF material possesses a high surface area (1564 m(2) g(-1)) and pore volume (1.767 cm(3) g(-1)) with nitrogen content of 3.42 wt%. A prototypical coin cell type symmetric N-MCNF SC device has been assembled with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate [EMIMBF4] ionic liquid electrolyte, and evaluated for SCs studies. The N-MCNF with high textural properties delivers unprecedented SC performance, such as high specific capacitance (204 Fg(-1) at 0.25 Ag-1, 25 degrees C), high energy density (63.4 Wh kg(-1)), high power density (35.9 kW kg(-1)) and long-term cycle life (32,500 cycles). Significantly, N-MCNF materials exhibited high power rate performance, at 500 mV(-1) (115 Fg(-1)) and 25 Ag-1 (166 Fg(-1)) owing to the uniform mesopore size distribution (similar to 4 nm). The N-MCNF SC device delivered maximum energy densities of 83.4 and 933 Wh kg(-1) at 60 degrees C and 90 degrees C, respectively. Such outstanding N-MCNF SC device is successfully demonstrated in solar energy harvester applications. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.