Synthesis of a Cotton-Derived Flexible Porous Carbon Fabric Electrode Using Nickel-Salt Pore Forming for Supercapacitors

A biomass-derived porous carbon electrode is regarded as a promising electrode material for supercapacitors; however, fabricating a high-performance biomass-derived super-flexible carbon film electrode still remains a great challenge. Herein, a super-flexible cotton-derived porous carbon electrode was fabricated by impregnating cotton fabric with Ni(Ac) 2 solution prior to carbonization. It is found that Ni(Ac) 2 shows excellent pore-forming effect, thus presenting outstanding improvement on the electrochemical performance. The targeted porous carbon fabric electrode possesses superior flexibility and is capable of being repeatedly folded. The optimum targeted electrode sample shows a large specific surface area of up to 373.1 m 2 g −1 , good electrochemical performance with a specific capacitance of up to eight times that of the directly cotton-derived electrode, a 82.6% capacitance retention from 0.5 to 10 A g −1 , and only 5.2% capacitance loss after 5000 cycles. The Ni(Ac) 2 impregnating shows considerable potential in fabricating super-flexible biomass-derived porous carbon electrode for energy storage devices.