Biomass-Derived Carbon Integrated With Activated Carbon Cloth as a Binder-Free Carbon Architecture for Tunable Charge...

Carbon architectures have attracted significant attention as binder-free electrodes for high-performance supercapacitors because of their excellent electrical conductivity and structural stability. Herein, a hierarchical carbon architecture was constructed by integrating biomass-derived carbon (BMC) with activated carbon cloth (ACC) to form a self-supported ACC/BMC electrode. The conductive ACC framework facilitates rapid electron transport, while BMC provides abundant electrochemically active sites for charge storage. In 6 M KOH electrolyte, the ACC/BMC electrode delivered a high areal capacitance of 1156.8 mF cm^{- 2} at 4 mA cm^{- 2}. Electrochemical kinetic analysis revealed a b-value of 0.99 and a capacitive contribution above 95%, indicating predominantly surface-controlled charge-storage behavior. The electrode also exhibited low charge-transfer resistance, while XPS analysis confirmed the presence of defect sites and heteroatom-containing functional groups that enhanced electrochemical activity. Electrolyte-dependent investigations demonstrated superior capacitive performance in an alkaline electrolyte compared with a neutral electrolyte. Furthermore, asymmetric supercapacitors assembled using ACC/BMC as the negative electrode and either P-doped NiMoO₄/MoO₂ or TiN@MnO₂ as the positive electrode achieved volumetric energy densities of 4.64 and 5.61 mWh cm^{- 3}, respectively. These findings demonstrate the potential of ACC/BMC as a high-performance binder-free electrode for advanced supercapacitor applications.