Synergizing Layered Carbon and Gel Electrolyte for Efficient Energy Storage
Yanyan Lu, Hongyu Mi, Chenchen Ji, Fengjiao Guo, Zhengyu Bai, Yibo Liu, Chang Yu, Jieshan Qiu
Abstract
Carbonaceous architectures are ideal candidates for sustainable energy applications, in which the major concern is how to cost-efficiently construct high-quality carbon products with remarkable electroactivity. Herein, we demonstrate a universal hybrid strategy using boric acid crystals as an intercalator, template, and boron dopant to conveniently regulate the morphology/structure/component toward layered carbon materials (copolymer-, glucose-, and lignosulfonate-based carbons). Compared with the other two carbon materials, the copolymer derived B/N codoped carbon (LDC) exhibits competitive overall performance (255.5 and 206.1 F g–1 at 0.5 and 100 A g–1, 91.2% retention over 10 000 cycles). To highlight, the LDC-based quasi-solid symmetric supercapacitor (SC) using neutral gel electrolyte delivers a quite high energy density of 19.8 Wh kg–1 (∼2.8 times that of LDC//PVA/KOH (gel)//LDC SC, 7.2 Wh kg–1), and long durability over 10 000 cycles. This study provides a universal strategy to prepare high-activity layered carbons and highlights that the synergy between the advanced electrode material and suitable electrolyte may give a new perspective on clean electrochemical energy.