One-step preparation of waste epoxy resin-derived nanosized carbon aerogel and its high supercapacitor performance

Abstract

Energy storage devices serve critical roles in both harvesting energy from new energy sources and supplying energy to consumers, and the performance of supercapacitors is heavily reliant on the performance of activated material, which is determined by the qualities achieved during the specified preparation process. Herein, due to the merit of isotropy of 0D carbon nanoparticles in structure and current transfer, spherical carbon aerogels (CA) with the size of ϕ ~ 100 nm are carbonized within 3 min in air in an open tube furnace, in which those waste epoxy resin blocks are chosen and reused as the carbon source. After the activation, the surface of activated CA (ACA) becomes rough, and its specific surface area reaches 1222.40 m²·g⁻¹. The above ACA owns high electrochemical supercapacitor performance: Referring to the ACA-based electrode, a specific capacitance of 298.8 F·g⁻¹ at 1 A·g⁻¹ and 92.81 % retention after 20,000 cycles of repeated charge/discharge. As for its symmetric supercapacitor (SSC), it has good CV behavior even at 1000 mV·s⁻¹, accompanied by an energy density of 20.92 W h·kg⁻¹ at the power density of 300 W·kg⁻¹, and 12.34 W h·kg⁻¹ even at 12000 W·kg⁻¹.