Pore regulation of well-developed honeycomb-like carbon materials from Zizania latifolia for supercapacitors

Porous carbon materials derived from biomass shows great promise for applications in electrochemical energy storage, stimulating a great deal of research interest. For the sake of boosting the electrochemical performance of porous carbon materials, pore regulation is usually one of the most effective means, thus making it a highly attractive target for the exploration of advanced carbon materials. In this work, the well-defined multi-heteroatom co-doped carbon frameworks with honeycomb-like porous structure are successfully fabricated using Zizania latifolia as the precursor, showing high specific surface area together with three-dimensional hierarchical porosity. Interestingly, the pore structure of the carbon materials is facilely regulatable by tuning the concentration of soaking solution. Profiting from their unique pore structure and the efficient pore regulation, the as-produced carbon has great potential as the electrode material for supercapacitor application. The fabricated carbon-based electrode exhibits a large specific capacitance up to 376 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1 current density, as well as a favorable cycling stability with 96.6% retention of the initial specific capacitance after 10,000 cycles at 20 A g−1 current density. Importantly, the corresponding symmetric supercapacitor device achieves a high energy density of 20.07 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 500 W kg−1.