Coupled ultrasonication-milling synthesis of hierarchically porous carbon for high-performance supercapacitor

Abstract Activated carbon (AC) based supercapacitors exhibit intrinsic advantages in energy storage. Traditional two-step synthesis (carbonization and activation) of AC faces difficulties in precisely regulating its pore-size distribution and thoroughly removing residual impurities like silicon oxide. This paper reports a novel coupled ultrasonication-milling (CUM) process for the preparation of hierarchically porous carbon (HPC) using corn cobs as the carbon resource. The as-obtained HPC is of a large surface area (2288 m 2  g −1 ) with a high mesopore ratio of ∼44.6%. When tested in a three-electrode system, the HPC exhibits a high specific capacitance of 465 F g −1 at 0.5 Ag −1 , 2.7 times higher than that (170 F g −1 ) of the commercial AC (YP-50F). In the two-electrode test system, the HPC device exhibits a specific capacitance of 135 F g −1 at 1 A g −1 , twice higher than that (68 F g −1 ) of YP-50F. The above excellent energy-storage properties are resulted from the CUM process which efficiently removes the impurities and modulates the mesopore/micropore structures of the AC samples derived from the agricultural resides of corn cobs. The CUM process is an efficient method to prepare high-performance biomass-derived AC materials.