Nitrogen self-doped carbon aerogels derived from trifunctional benzoxazine monomers as ultralight supercapacitor electrodes

Abstract

Ultralight benzoxazine-derived porous nitrogen self-doped carbon aerogels with good yield can be prepared by direct polymerization of trifunctional benzoxazine monomers under acid catalysis using concentrated hydrochloric acid. This allows for a significantly widened density range (0.8–4.5 mg cm⁻³) and avoids any sacrificial etching. When serving as electrode materials for supercapacitors, the resulting hierarchical porous carbon aerogels show ultrahigh specific capacitance, excellent rate performance and good cycling stability (retention of 97.3% even after 10 000 continuous charge–discharge cycles). Besides energy storage devices, the interconnected nanoporous carbon aerogels can also find applications in oil/water separation, heavy metal removal, catalyst supports, and so forth.