Nitrogen-containing chitosan-based carbon as an electrode material for high-performance supercapacitors

Abstract

Nitrogen-containing activated carbons were prepared from chitosan, a widely available and inexpensive biopolysaccharide, by a simple procedure and tested as electrode material in supercapacitors. The physical activation of chitosan chars with CO 2 led to carbons with a very high nitrogen content (up to 5.4 wt%) and moderate surface areas (1000-1100 m 2 g -1 ). Only chitosan-based activated carbons with a similar microporous structure were considered in this study to evaluate the effect of the nitrogen content and distribution on their electrochemical performance. The N-containing activated carbons were tested in two-and three-electrode supercapacitors using an aqueous electrolyte (1 M H 2 SO 4 ), and they exhibited superior surface capacitance (19.5 lF cm -2 ) and pseudocapacitance compared to a commercial activated carbon with a negligible nitrogen content and similar microporosity. The low oxygen content and the presence of stable quaternary nitrogen improved the charge propagation on the chitosan-based carbons, which was confirmed by the high capacity retention of 83 %. The chitosan-based carbons exhibited excellent cyclic stability and maintained 100 % of their capacitance after 5000 charge/discharge cycles at a current density of 1 A g -1 . These results demonstrate the suitability of chitosan-based carbons for application in energy storage systems.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

Chitosan-based activated carbon as economic and efficient sustainable material for capacitive deionization of low salinity water

“…Additionally, the chemical structure of chitosan contains amine groups (N-containing) and hydroxyl groups that can improve the wettability of AC products. Previous studies have demonstrated that chitosan is a suitable precursor for porous carbon materials that have been applied in supercapacitors [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] and lithium ion batteries. 34,36 However, the electrosorption behaviour of chitosan-based AC (CTS-AC) for salt ions during CDI is still unknown and worthy of study.…”

Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon derived from a chitosan/polyethylene glycol blend for high performance supercapacitors

“…There are only a few reports about the preparation of N-doped carbons from chitosan, 36,37 and the pore structure of the obtained carbons is poorly developed, which would greatly hamper their application in supercapacitors. [38][39][40] So adding appropriate substances to regulate pore structure is desired. PEG is a water soluble polymer, has good compatibility with chitosan, they can be mixed into homogeneous solutions.…”

Chitosan Intercalated Metal Organic Gel as a Green Precursor of Fe Entrenched and Fe Distributed N-Doped Mesoporous Graphitic Carbon for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…Chitosan, the N rich (6.89%) naturally abundant polysaccharide has attracted much interest as metal binding/extraction system owing to its inherent chelating properties. In addition, its N enriched structure was further explored as a resource for the development of N‐doped carbon with improved conductivity and capacitance for supercapacitor electrodes ,. Recent attempts to understand ORR catalytic activity of chitosan based systems mainly employed simple mixing of other nitrogen rich sources such as urea and melamine into chitosan followed by pyrolysis.…”

“…In addition, its N enriched structure was further explored as a resource for the development of N-doped carbon with improved conductivity and capacitance for supercapacitor electrodes. [35,36] Recent attempts to understand ORR catalytic activity of chitosan based systems mainly employed simple mixing of other nitrogen rich sources such as urea and melamine into chitosan followed by pyrolysis. However, ORR performance of the pyrolyzed chitosan-urea [37] and N-doped carbon from chitosan-melamine [38] systems were found to be not satisfactory enough to be proposed as a good catalyst.…”