Defective mesoporous carbon coupled with a redox additive electrolyte for high performance supercapacitor

Defective mesoporous carbon (DMC) has been successfully synthesized via a facile hard templating pathway. The obtained material exhibits an interconnected porous framework with a high specific surface area of 1350 m2 g−1, average pore diameter of 5.5 nm and pore volume of 3.12 cm3 g−1. In addition, the possibility of acid orange 45 as novel redox mediator is investigated. The supercapacitor performance of DMC is significantly improved through introducing of 0.01 M acid orange 45 as redox additive into 1 M aqueous solution of H2SO4. DMC electrode exhibits a high specific capacitance of 324 F g−1, a good rate capability of 169 F g−1 at 10 A g−1 with 52 % capacitance retention at the media of redox added electrolyte (acid orange 45 + H2SO4). Also, the specific energy of 11.5 Wh kg−1 was obtained for symmetric device which shows nearly threefold increase over the DMC electrode with pure H2SO4 electrolyte.