Template-free fabrication of nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres for high-performance supercapacitors based on a scalable homopolymer vesicle
Presented in this article is the template-free fabrication of nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres (N-HCSs) as electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors based on scalable homopolymer vesicles, which are self-assembled from an amphiphilic homopolymer, poly(amic acid) (PAA). This homopo...
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Published in | Journal of materials chemistry. A, Materials for energy and sustainability Vol. 4; no. 31; pp. 12088 - 12097 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
2016
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Presented in this article is the template-free fabrication of nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres (N-HCSs) as electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors based on scalable homopolymer vesicles, which are self-assembled from an amphiphilic homopolymer, poly(amic acid) (PAA). This homopolymer can be massively produced by simple stepwise polymerization at room temperature with a fast polymerization rate. For the first time, PAA homopolymer vesicles are carbonized to form N-HCSs with tunable porous structures and nitrogen contents (from 1.3% to 7.4%) by controlling the content of the cross-linker (melamine). This template-free method for fabricating N-HCSs is more environmentally friendly and does not involve tedious synthetic procedures compared to traditional template-based methods. More importantly, the N-HCSs exhibit excellent electrochemical performance with a very high specific capacitance (266.9 F g-1) after more than 1000 cycles when used as the active electrode material for the supercapacitor. The N-HCSs presented in this paper retain its specific capacitance as high as 84% at a very high current density (20 A g-1). Given the potential massive production and excellent electrochemical properties, the N-HCSs based on the carbonization of scalable PAA homopolymer vesicles are promising candidate electrode materials for energy storage devices. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2050-7488 2050-7496 |
DOI: | 10.1039/c6ta04330e |