Highly porous carbon material from polycyclodextrin for high-performance supercapacitor electrode

Using low-cost biomass to develop ultra-high specific surface area carbon electrode materials for supercapacitors is very important, but it is still challenging. In this paper, using the “bottom-up” idea and starting from the hydrolysate of starch, highly porous carbon material is fabricated by simple polymerization of β-cyclodextrin (CD) and chemical activation. The obtained material shows a maximum specific surface area (SSA) up to 3710 m2 g−1 and pore volume of 2.03 cm3 g−1. Thanks to the hierarchical porous structure and ultra-high specific surface area, the carbon based supercapacitors demonstrates high capacitance of 416 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1 and excellent cycling stability of 100 % capacity retention after 10,000 cycles in 6.0 M KOH electrolyte system. Furthermore, an attractive energy density of 23.4 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 224.9 W kg−1 in 1.8 V Na2SO4 electrolyte system can be delivered. The polycyclic dextrin based porous carbon reported in this paper has better electrochemical performance than most carbon based electrode materials reported today, which provides a feasible synthetic method for the synthesis of excellent supercapacitor electrode materials.