Abstract
Petroleum coke (PC) is a low-cost and potential carbon source for electrochemical energy storage. To expand the utilization of PC in supercapacitor, PC-based activated carbons (PCACs) with heteroatoms-doped were prepared from PC by KOH chemical activation. The as-prepared carbon exhibited a high surface area (2326.4 m2/g) and hierarchical micro-mesoporous structure, resulting in a high specific capacitance (421 F/g at 1 A/g) and excellent rate performance in KOH electrolyte (217 F/g at 50 A/g). Meanwhile, to improve the high-rate capacitive performance of PCACs in H2SO4 electrolyte, functionalized activated carbon (HQ/PCAC-4) was prepared by physically adsorbing the hydroquinone (HQ) on PCACs. The HQ/PCAC-4 showed an unprecedented capacitance value of 300.2 F/g even at an ultrahigh current density of 50 A/g. In addition, the energy density of HQ/PCAC-4 in H2SO4 electrolyte reached 19.5 W h/kg. The high energy density and excellent rate performance ensured their prosperous application in high-power energy storage system.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (21476264), Distinguished Young Scientist Foundation of Shandong Province (JQ201215), Taishan Scholar Foundation (ts20130929) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (15CX05029A, 15CX08009A).
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Zhang, Y., Cai, T., Huang, J. et al. Functionalized activated carbon prepared form petroleum coke with high-rate supercapacitive performance. Journal of Materials Research 31, 3723–3730 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.405
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.405