High-energy supercapacitors based on hierarchical porous carbon with an ultrahigh ion-accessible surface area in ionic liquid electrolytes

Abstract

A very important yet really challenging issue to address is how to greatly increase the energy density of supercapacitors to approach or even exceed those of batteries without sacrificing the power density. Herein we report the fabrication of a new class of ultrahigh surface area hierarchical porous carbon (UHSA-HPC) based on the pore formation and widening of polystyrene-derived HPC by KOH activation, and highlight its superior ability for energy storage in supercapacitors with ionic liquid (IL) as electrolyte. The UHSA-HPC with a surface area of more than 3000 m² g⁻¹ shows an extremely high energy density, i.e., 118 W h kg⁻¹ at a power density of 100 W kg⁻¹. This is ascribed to its unique hierarchical nanonetwork structure with a large number of small-sized nanopores for IL storage and an ideal meso-/macroporous network for IL transfer.