Hierarchically Fe-doped porous carbon derived from phenolic resin for high performance supercapacitor

Abstract Supercapacitors are promising for high power application in the recent years. In particular, the conversion of simple and available carbon materials into economic and high performance electrical devices receives excellent scientific and technological interest. This paper reports a one-step strategy for synthesizing hierarchical porous carbon derived from phenolic resin (PR), which is then used to configure electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs). Here, a carbon material with a flexible porous structure, large specific surface area, and high graphitization degree is prepared using potassium ferrate (K2FeO4) to catalytically activate PR and to realize synchronous carbonization and graphitization. This method overcomes the disadvantage of time-consuming, high-cost, and environmentally unfriendly. In addition, the as-prepared carbon material has a high specific surface area (1086 m2 g−1) and a large pore size (3.07 nm), which can increase the transfer rate of electrolyte ions. The specific capacitance of the obtained electrode material is 315 F g−1 at 1.0 A g−1, and the optimized electrode material has an ultra-long cycle lifetime (capacitance retention rate is 96.3% after 10,000 cycles). Thus, the hierarchically Fe-doped porous carbon material derived from PR material is expected to realize high rate capacitance for supercapacitor applications.