Mesopore-dominant activated carbon aerogels with high surface area for electric double-layer capacitor application

Abstract A very important yet challenging issue to address is how to greatly increase the surface area of porous carbons while keeping a developed mesoporosity for ion diffusion/transfer in electric double-layer capacitor application. Herein we report the fabrication of a new class of mesopore-dominant activated carbon aerogel (ACA-P) with high surface area based on the pore formation and widening effect of H 3 PO 4 . ACA-P shows a specific capacitance of 201 F g −1 at 0.1 A g −1 , which stays over 90% (180 F g −1 ) as the current density increases to 5 A g −1 . This excellent supercapacitive behavior is ascribed to the high surface area of 2477 m 2 g −1 donated by the extremely high mesopore ratio of 99%, which can guarantee rapid diffusion/transfer of electrolyte.