Microphase Separation Engineering toward 3D Porous Carbon Assembled from Nanosheets for Flexible All-Solid-State...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Electrochemistry
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Flexible energy storage demands advanced carbon materials with optimized properties.
• Balancing specific surface area, pore structure, and conductivity in carbon materials remains a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a facile strategy for fabricating 3D porous carbon materials with tunable hierarchical structures.
• To investigate the performance of these carbon materials in all-solid-state supercapacitors.

Main Methods:

• A microphase separation strategy using amphiphilic coal tar pitch and chitosan.
• A stepped pyrolysis process to form hierarchical pores and a nanosheet network.
• Fabrication of symmetric all-solid-state supercapacitors.

Main Results:

• Hierarchical porous carbon assembled by nanosheets (HCAs) with tunable structures were successfully synthesized.
• The HCAs exhibited a meso-dominant porous structure, high specific surface area, and nitrogen-rich characteristics.
• The supercapacitor achieved a specific capacitance of 296 F g^-1 at 0.2 A g^-1 and an energy density of 27 Wh kg^-1 at 450 W kg^-1 with a wide voltage range of 0-1.8 V.

Conclusions:

• The microphase separation strategy is effective for designing carbon materials with multilevel nanoarchitectural trade-offs.
• The developed HCAs are promising for high-performance flexible energy storage applications.
• This approach offers a novel route for fabricating advanced carbon-based electrode materials.