Dexterous and friendly preparation of N/P co-doping hierarchical porous carbon nanofibers via electrospun chitosan for high performance supercapacitors

Abstract Fabricating continuous porous carbon nanofibers (CNFs) based on biomass materials still remains challenging for current supercapacitors (SCs) results from the limitation of carbon yield and molecular flexibility. In this work, P and N dual-doped 1D porous carbon nanofibers (PNF) are prepared through a controllable way by electrospinning phytic acid solution of chitosan (CS)/ polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) with subsequent crucial segmented carbonization. Due to the ultra-high specific surface area, extremely low charge transfer resistance, and the contribution of N, P dual doping to pseudocapacitors, the obtained PNF exhibits the highest specific capacitance of 358.7 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1. More notably, a symmetrical SC assembled by PNF achieves an outstanding capacitance of 94 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1, and a high energy density of 13.1 W h kg−1 at a power density of 248 W kg−1, furthermore, a high capacitance retention of 87.5% is performed after 10,000 cycles. It is firmly believed that the research on the preparation method and performance of carbon nanofibers involved in this article is of profound inspiration for mobile power sources.