Enhancing the performance of supercapacitor electrodes from corncob-derived 3D hierarchical porous carbon: Effects of N concentration

Enhancing the performance of supercapacitor electrodes from corncob-derived 3D hierarchical porous carbon: Effects of N concentration

We report supercapacitors from hierarchical porous carbon nanostructures (HPCNs) by simple pyrolysis of corncob (CC), with urea doping providing performance comparable to the more common metal-doped electrodes. Via a systematic study of N doping, we establish for the first time that the types of nit...

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Main Authors: J.C. Martínez-Loyola, M.A. Carrasco-Cordero, I.L. Alonso-Lemus, F.J. Rodríguez-Varela, S. Ravichandran, B. Escobar-Morales, Y.I. Vega-Cantú, F.J. Rodríguez-Macías
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-08-01
Series:Electrochemistry Communications
Subjects:
Corncob biomass waste
Hierarchical porous carbon Nanoarchitectures
Nitrogen doping
Energy storage
Metal-free supercapacitors
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388248125000797
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Summary:We report supercapacitors from hierarchical porous carbon nanostructures (HPCNs) by simple pyrolysis of corncob (CC), with urea doping providing performance comparable to the more common metal-doped electrodes. Via a systematic study of N doping, we establish for the first time that the types of nitrogen‑carbon species, which vary with the urea‑carbon ratio, affect electrode performance. The 1:3 ratio (CC3) gave a higher specific capacitance of 335 F g−1 at 1 mV s−1 in a three-electrode system, and 287 F g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 in a symmetric device. We achieved solution and transfer resistances lower than reported for other materials: Rs = 0.20 Ω and Rct = 0.78 Ω respectively. We attribute the better performance of CC3 to its specific N-doping, dominated by graphitic-N plus oxidized nitrogen and C–OH groups; showing also a larger carbon (002) interplanar distance (d(002) = 0.392) and high specific surface area (1149 m2 g−1). The assembled prototype delivers a good energy density of 9.96 Wh kg−1 at 403.22 W kg−1 and retains ca. 76 % capacity after 10,000 cycles. This work shows that studying doping concentrations is essential to design and produce highly efficient biomass-based electrodes for energy storage applications, using simple synthesis methods and readily available reagents.
ISSN:1388-2481

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