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Large-scale multirole Zn(II) programmed synthesis of ultrathin hierarchically porous carbon nanosheets

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Abstract

ZIF-derived carbon structures are considered as desired electrode materials for supercapacitors due to their high surface area, high conductivity, and porous structure. However, the most reported ratio of 2-methylimidazole and Zn(II) is 4:1 to 20:1, which limits commercial applications due to the increasing cost. In this paper, a multirole Zn(II)-assisted method is presented from Zn(II) solution, ZnO, ZnO/ZIF-8 core-shell nanostructure, to 3D hierarchical micro-meso-macroporous carbon structures with a 1:1 ratio of 2-methylimidazole and Zn(II). The hierarchically porous carbon has a high surface area of 1800 m2 g−1 due to the synergistic effect of multirole Zn(II). The unique carbon-based half-cell delivers the specific capacitances of 377 and 221 F g−1 at the current densities of 1.0 and 50 A g−1, respectively. As a 2.5 V symmetrical supercapacitor, the device reveals a high double-layer capacitance of 24.4 F g−1, a power density of 62.5 kW kg−1, and more than 85.8% capacitance can be retained over 10000 cycles at 10 A g−1. More importantly, the low-cost hierarchically porous carbon could be easily produced on a large scale and almost all chemicals can be reused in the sustainable method.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Future Energy Laboratory, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    LingSong Xu, FanCheng Meng, XiangFeng Wei, ChangHao Lin & JieHua Liu

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, 127788, United Arab Emirates

    LianXi Zheng

  3. Engineering Research Center of High-Performance Copper Alloy Materials and Processing, Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Materials and Devices of Anhui Province, Hefei, 230009, China

    JieHua Liu

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  1. LingSong Xu
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  2. FanCheng Meng
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  3. XiangFeng Wei
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  4. ChangHao Lin
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  5. LianXi Zheng
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  6. JieHua Liu
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Correspondence to LianXi Zheng or JieHua Liu.

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Xu, L., Meng, F., Wei, X. et al. Large-scale multirole Zn(II) programmed synthesis of ultrathin hierarchically porous carbon nanosheets. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 63, 1730–1738 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-019-1510-0

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