Biomass-Derived Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanofiber Network: A Facile Template for Decoration of Ultrathin Nickel-Cobalt Layered Double Hydroxide Nanosheets as High-Performance Asymmetric Supercapacitor Electrode

The development of biomass-based energy storage devices is an emerging trend to reduce the ever-increasing consumption of non-renewable resources. Here, nitrogen-doped carbonized bacterial cellulose (CBC-N) nanofibers are obtained by one-step carbonization of polyaniline coated bacterial cellulose (BC) nanofibers, which not only display excellent capacitive performance as the supercapacitor electrode, but also act as 3D bio-template for further deposition of ultrathin nickel-cobalt layered double hydroxide (Ni-Co LDH) nanosheets. The as-obtained CBC-N@LDH composite electrodes exhibit significantly enhanced specific capacitance (1949.5 F g(-1) at a discharge current density of 1 A g(-1), based on active materials), high capacitance retention of 54.7% even at a high discharge current density of 10 A g(-1) and excellent cycling stability of 74.4% retention after 5000 cycles. Furthermore, asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs) are constructed using CBC-N@LDH composites as positive electrode materials and CBC-N nanofibers as negative electrode materials. By virtue of the intrinsic pseudocapacitive characteristics of CBC-N@LDH composites and 3D nitrogen-doped carbon nanofiber networks, the developed ASC exhibits high energy density of 36.3 Wh kg(-1) at the power density of 800.2 W kg(-1). Therefore, this work presents a novel protocol for the large-scale production of biomass-derived high-performance electrode materials in practical supercapacitor applications.