Nitrogen-Doped Hollow Mesoporous Carbon Tube for Supercapacitors Application

Abstract

Hollow mesoporous carbon tube with high specific surface area are widely used in supercapacitors due to their length-diameter ratio, unique tubular structures, low density, fast ionic diffusion and good electrical conductivity. Herein, N-doped hollow mesoporous carbon tube (HMCT) were prepared via electrostatic assembly approach by using MnO2 rods as the templates, resorcinol/formaldehyde (RF) as the carbon precursor, tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as pore-forming agents, ethylenediamine (EDA) as the base catalyst and nitrogen precursor. The obtained N-doped HMCT replicates the morphology of MnO2 and has a uniform hollow tubular structure. The addition of TEOS creates rich mesoporous on the shell which greatly improves the surface area. In addition, EDA is not only a catalyst for resin polymerization and TEOS hydrolysis, but also a nitrogen precursor that leads to in situ N-doping in the HMCT framework. An electrode made of this material exhibits a specific capacitance of 307 F g−1 at 1 A g−1 and excellent rate performance (78.2% retention ratio at 20 A g−1). Furthermore, N-doped HMCT based two-electrode system possesses energy density of 72.4 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 3.2 KW kg−1 in the wide voltage range of 1.6 V, exhibiting its potential for electrode materials with high performance.