Rational design of dense microporous carbon derived from coal tar pitch towards high mass loading supercapacitors

Xiaoxia Yang; Guoxiao Sun; Fei Wang; Xi Li; Zhuangzhuang Zhang; Yanzhong Zhen; Danjun Wang; Xiaoming Gao; Feng Fu; Ru'an Chi

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.179

Rational design of dense microporous carbon derived from coal tar pitch towards high mass loading supercapacitors

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Sep 15:646:228-237. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.179. Epub 2023 May 6.

Authors

Xiaoxia Yang¹, Guoxiao Sun², Fei Wang², Xi Li², Zhuangzhuang Zhang², Yanzhong Zhen², Danjun Wang², Xiaoming Gao³, Feng Fu⁴, Ru'an Chi⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Research Institute of Comprehensive Energy Industry Technology, Yan'an University, Yan'an 716000, Shaanxi, China; Xingfa School of Mining Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073, Hubei, China.
² College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Research Institute of Comprehensive Energy Industry Technology, Yan'an University, Yan'an 716000, Shaanxi, China.
³ College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Research Institute of Comprehensive Energy Industry Technology, Yan'an University, Yan'an 716000, Shaanxi, China. Electronic address: dawn1026@163.com.
⁴ College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Research Institute of Comprehensive Energy Industry Technology, Yan'an University, Yan'an 716000, Shaanxi, China. Electronic address: yadxfufeng@126.com.
⁵ Xingfa School of Mining Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073, Hubei, China. Electronic address: rac@wit.edu.cn.

PMID: 37196496
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.179

Abstract

The compact carbon materials with huge specific surface area (SSA) and proper pore structure are highly desirable towards high-performance supercapacitors at the cell level. However, to well balance of porosity and density is still an on-going task. Herein, a universal and facile strategy of pre-oxidation-carbonization-activation is employed to prepare the dense microporous carbons from coal tar pitch. The optimized sample POCA800 not only possesses a well-developed porous structure with the SSA of 2142 m² g^-1 and total pore volume (V_t) of 1.540 cm³ g^-1, but also exhibits a high packing density of 0.58 g cm^-3 and proper graphitization. Owing to these advantages, POCA800 electrode at areal mass loading of 10 mg cm^-2 shows a high specific capacitance of 300.8 F g^-1 (174.5 F cm^-3) at 0.5 A g^-1 and good rate performance. The POCA800 based symmetrical supercapacitor with a total mass loading of 20 mg cm^-2 displays a large energy density of 8.07 Wh kg^-1 at 125 W kg^-1 and remarkable cycling durability. It is revealed that the prepared density microporous carbons are promising for practical applications.

Keywords: Coal tar pitch; Dense microporous carbon; High mass loading; Supercapacitor.