Simple and effective strategy to synthesize porous carbon with controlled structures for supercapacitor

With remarkable electrochemical stability/conductivity and abundant porous structure, porous carbon electrodes can store considerable amount of charge electrostatically by reversible adsorption of electrolyte, thereby showing high capacity and cycle stability for supercapacitor. However, there was lack of simple and effective ways to synthesize porous carbon materials with controllable structures. Herein, porous carbon materials with controlled structures (copper coin, 3D framework with closed-packing order, and hollow sphere) have been synthesized by an extension of Stober method using phenolic resin as carbon sources. SiO2 nanoparticles (120 nm) were used as the macroporous templates and Pluronic F127/tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as mesoporous templates. Adjusting the amount of TEOS helped to explore the synthesis mechanism. As-synthesized porous carbon materials exhibit high surface area of 316–482 m2 g−1 and large pore volumes of 0.306–0.748 cm3 g−1. The materials thereby obtained when used as electrodes in capacitors demonstrate specific capacitance (up to 83 F g−1 at 5 mV s−1) and good robustness after 2000 cycles, which contributed by their abundant porous structure, large surface area/pore volume, morphology, and electrochemical conductivity.