Facile fabrication and capacitive performance of glucose-derived porous carbon

Porous activated glucose-derived carbon materials (samples AGC-600-x) are fabricated with a facile impregnation-calcination strategy by using zinc chloride (ZnCl2) as a chemical etchant. The analytic results reveal that the representative sample AGC-600-2 possesses a porous structure with high surface area (SBET = 1690 m2 g−1). When used as electrode materials, the sample AGC-600-2 exhibits a specific capacitance of 176.75 F g−1 at 1.0 A g−1 in a three-electrode system. Moreover, AGC-600-2-based symmetrical supercapacitor possesses an energy density of 17.99 Wh kg−1 at the power density of 399.94 W kg−1. Also, the as-prepared symmetrical two-electrode supercapacitor displays superior recyclability, with only 8.1% capacitance loss after 10000 charge-discharge cycles at 1.0 A g−1. The strategy adopted in this work offers a facile way to fabricate the porous glucose-derived carbon materials at a large scale, which is crucial for their practical applications in supercapacitors, batteries and filters.