Nitrogen doped microporous carbon nanospheres derived from chitin nanogels as attractive materials for supercapacitors. Issue 19 (9th April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zheng, Si; Cui, Yin; Zhang, Jianwei; Gu, Yuxing; Shi, Xiaowen; Peng, Chuang; Wang, Dihua
• Is Part Of: RSC advances. Volume 9:Issue 19(2019)
• Page Start: 10976
• Page End: 10982
• Publication Date: 2019-04-09
• Subjects: Chemistry -- Periodicals; 540.5
• DOI: 10.1039/c9ra00683d
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2046-2069

Abstract

Abstract : N-doped microporous carbon nanospheres were directly carbonized from chitin nanogels and demonstrated fascinating supercapacitance performance. Abstract : N-doped porous carbon nanospheres were fabricated directly by pyrolyzing chitin nanogels, which were facilely prepared by mechanical agitation induced sol–gel transition of chitin solution in NaOH/urea solvent. The resulting carbon nanospheres displayed ordered micropores (centered at ∼0.6 nm) and high BET surface area of up to 1363 m 2 g −1, which is substantially larger than that of the carbons from raw chitin (600 m 2 g −1 ). In addition, the carbon nanospheres retained a nitrogen content of 3.2% and excellent conductivity. Consequently, supercapacitor electrodes prepared from the carbon nanospheres pyrolyzed at 800 °C showed a specific capacitance as high as 192 F g −1 at a current density of 0.5 A g −1 and impressive rate capability (81% retention at 10 A g −1 ). When assembled in a symmetrical two-electrode cell, N-doped porous carbon nanospheres demonstrated excellent cycling stability both in aqueous and organic electrolytes (95% retention after 10 000 cycles at 10 A g −1 ), together with outstanding energy density of 5.1 W h kg −1 at the power density of 2364.9 W kg −1 . This work introduces a novel and efficient method to prepared N-doped porous carbon nanospheres directly from chitin and demonstrates the great potential of utilization of abundant polymers from nature in power storage.