Nanoarchitectonics of Nanoporous Carbon Materials from Natural Resource for Supercapacitor Application

Nanoarchitectonics of nanoporous carbon materials (NCMs) derived from natural resource; Areca Catechu Nut (ACN) with enhanced electrochemical supercapacitance properties is reported. ACN powder is chemically activated in a tubular furnace at 400 °C and the effect of activating agent sodium hydroxide (NaOH), zinc chloride (ZnCl 2 ) and phosphoric acid (H 3 PO 4 ) on the textural properties, surface functional groups and electrochemical supercapacitance properties was thoroughly examined. We found that ACN derived NCMs are amorphous in nature comprising of macropores, micropores and hierarchical micro- and mesopore architecture depending on the activating agent. Surface area and pore volume are found in the range 25–1985 m 2 g −1 and 0.12–3.42 cm 3 g −1 , respectively giving the best textural properties for H 3 PO 4 activated NCM. Nevertheless, despite the different chemical activating agent used, all the prepared NCMs showed similar oxygen-containing surface functional groups (carboxyl, carboxylate, carbonyl and phenolic groups). The H 3 PO 4 activated NCM showed excellent supercapacitance properties giving a high specific capacitance of ca. 342 F g −1 at a scan rate of 5 mV s −1 together with the high cyclic stability sustaining capacitance retention of about 97% after 5000 charging/discharging cycles. Electrochemical supercapacitance properties have demonstrated that the ACN derived novel nanoporous carbon material would be a potential material in energy storage application.