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N-doped porous carbon nanofibers derived from N-rich cross-linked polymer for high-performance supercapacitors

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Abstract

Porous carbon materials with regular morphological structure and high heteroatom content have great application potentials in the area of novel energy storage devices. Herein, a family of novel N-doped porous carbon nanofibers are prepared by using a facile CuCl2-mediated activation of a fiber-like N-rich cross-linked polymer, which is readily accessible based on a solvent-thermal reaction between 2,4,6-tris(4-aminophenyl)triazine and dimethyl succinyl succinate. With the assistance of the mild activating reagent (CuCl2), the as-prepared carbon nanofibers (C-X-CuCl2) retain the fibrous morphology of precursor and achieve abundant heteroatom species in the carbon skeleton. The C-X-CuCl2 samples obtain the highest specific surface area of 1964.9 m2 g–1 and the highest N/O doping contents of 10.10 and 15.06 at.%, respectively, all of which are favorable for improving electrochemical performance when applied in supercapacitors. The C-750-CuCl2 electrode delivers the best-performed overall capacitance of 281.5 F g–1 at 0.5 A g–1, and its symmetrical supercapacitors with aqueous electrolyte (6 M KOH) show 93.1% of capacity retention after 10000 charging/discharging operations at 5.0 A g–1. An outstanding energy density of 75.5 Wh kg–1 at a power density of 300 W kg–1 is realized as well for the C-750-CuCl2-based symmetrical supercapacitors when 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate is used as the electrolyte. These results indicate that the C-750-CuCl2 carbon nanofiber is a promising material for high-performance supercapacitors.

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This work obtained financial supports from the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2022JJ30560).

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  1. Jiang Peng and Jing Huang contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Environmentally Friendly Chemistry and Applications of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, People’s Republic of China

    Jiang Peng, Jing Huang, Junqing Zeng, Liping Zheng & Huajie Chen

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Jiang Peng: Methodology, Investigation, Writing-Original Draft, Data curation. Jing Huang: Writing-Original Draft, Visualization. Junqing Zeng: Software. Liping Zheng: Supervision, Validation. Huajie Chen: Supervision, Resources, Writing-review & editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Peng, J., Huang, J., Zeng, J. et al. N-doped porous carbon nanofibers derived from N-rich cross-linked polymer for high-performance supercapacitors. Ionics 30, 979–990 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-023-05287-2

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