Nitrogen hybridization is an attractive way to enhance the wettability and electric conductivity of porous carbon, which increases the capacitance of carbon-based supercapacitor, however, there is lack of low-cost methods to prepare the nitrogen-doped porous carbon materials. Herein, a novel facile nitrogen-containing bio-phenolic resin was synthesized by polymerization of the carbamate bio-oil, Phenol and paraformaldehyde. As a precursor of nitrogen-doped porous carbon, the nitrogen-containing bio-phenol resin was activated by the one-step molten-salt method. The resultant nitrogen-doped porous carbon showed a high specific surface area up to 1401 m2·g-1. As a supercapacitor electrode, the nitrogen-doped porous carbons showed specific capacitance of 159 F·g-1 at 0.5 A·g-1. It also exhibited high cyclic stability with 94.8% retention of the initial specific capacitance over 1000 charge-discharge cycles at 1.0 A·g-1. The results suggest that these nitrogen-containing bio-phenol resin provide a new source of nitrogen-doped porous carbon for high-performance supercapacitor electrodes.
Keywords: bio-phenol resin; electrode material; molten salt; nitrogen-doped; porous carbon; supercapacitor.