Effect of the pore length and orientation upon the electrochemical capacitive performance of ordered mesoporous carbons

By utilizing hard template method to adjust the mesopore length, and alkali activation to generate micro pores, two hierarchical porous carbons (HPCs) were prepared. With controlling of their mesopore length and the activation conditions, the complex system composed by HPCs and electrolyte was simplified and the effect of mesopore length on the performance of HPCs as electrodes in supercapacitors was investigated. It is found that with the mesopore length getting smaller, the ordered area gets smaller and the aggregation occurs, which is caused by the high surface energy of small grains. HPC with long pores (HPCL) exhibits a donut-like morphology with well-defined ordered mesopores and a regular orientation while in HPC with short pores (HPCS), short mesopores are only orderly distributed in small regions. Longer ordered channels form unobstructed ways for ions transport in the particles while shorter channels, only orderly distributed in small areas, results in blocked paths, which may hinder the electrolyte ions transport. Due to the unobstructed structure, HPCL exhibits good rate capability with a capacitance retention rate over 86% as current density increasing from 50 mA/g to 1000 mA/g. The specific capacitance of HPCL derived from the cyclic voltammetry test at 10 mV/s is up to 201.72 F/g, while the specific capacitance of HPCS is only 193.65 F/g. (C) 2016 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved