A review on carbon materials for electrochemical energy storage applications: State of the art, implementation, and synergy with metallic compounds for supercapacitor and battery electrodes

Carbon materials play a fundamental role in electrochemical energy storage due to their appealing properties, including low cost, high availability, low environmental impact, surface functional groups, high electrical conductivity, alongside thermal, mechanical, and chemical stability, among other factors. Currently, carbon materials can be considered the most extensively explored family in the field of supercapacitors and batteries, which are devices covering a wide range of applications demanding high power and high energy. However, as with all technologies, there is a process of adaptation and optimization; hence, carbon materials have been aligning with the advances that emerge. Similarly, over the years, new methods and processes have been discovered to produce carbons more suitable for energy storage, adapting them to present a good synergy with metal-based compounds to meet current standards. In this work, we present a compilation of advances in the field of carbon materials used in supercapacitors and batteries, from the inception of these technologies to the present day.