Nitrogen and Sulfur Codoped Porous Carbon Directly Derived from Potassium Citrate and Thiourea for High-Performance Supercapacitors

Abstract

By introducing a heteroatom into carbon material, an effective improvement in capacitance can be realized owing to surface oxidation and reduction reactions of pseudocapacitors. Herein, a simple one-pot carbonization activation method was proposed to convert potassium citrate into three-dimensional interconnected porous carbon (PC). Then, an effective double heteroatom doping method by thiourea was used to prepare nitrogen-sulfur-doped PC (N,S-PC). This porous structure facilitates the storage of a large number of ions and reduces their diffusion path. The synthesized N,S-PC nanomaterial has a capacitance of 674 F/g at 1 A/g in a 1 M H₂SO₄ electrolyte, can retain 94.41% of the initial capacitance after 10 000 cycles at 5 A/g, and has a long cycle life. More importantly, a symmetric supercapacitor assembled with this material can exhibit an energy density of up to 32.6 (W·h)/kg at a high-power density of 750 W/kg. This is due to the high performance of N,S-PC in supercapacitor electrode materials.