Production of polypropylene-derived novel porous carbon nanosheets through aromatization stabilization toward supercapacitor applications

Polypropylene (PP) is a promising precursor for porous carbon materials. However, the thermal treatment of PP would generate volatile hydrocarbons, which makes it still a trouble to prepare PP-derived porous carbon by a one-step methodology. Herein, PP-derived carbon nanosheets were successfully prepared by an aromatization stabilization strategy. The hydrogen atoms in PP are deprived by chloride in CuCl2, resulting in dehydrogenated PP. The aliphatic hydrocarbon chain from the dehydrogenated PP would aromatize into a laddered structure that could undergo carbonization without complete decomposition. The deposition of gaseous hydrocarbons from PP on CuCl would enable the formation of porous carbon nanosheets. The carbon nanosheets would experience activation through further hydrogen deprivation reaction at temperatures above 500 °C. Benefiting from this nanosheet structure's short ion diffusion pathway, PP-derived carbon exhibited excellent rate performance as supercapacitor electrodes.