Oxygen/phosphorus co-doped porous carbon from cicada slough as high-performance electrode material for supercapacitors

Synthesizing high-performance electrode materials plays a vital role in fabricating advanced supercapacitors. Heteroatom doping has been proved to be effective in enhancing the electrochemical properties of carbon-based electrodes. Herein, we report an O, P co-doped porous carbon (PC) originated from waste biomaterials, cicada sloughs. The PC possesses meso-/microporous structure with a large specific surface area (1945 m ² ·g ⁻¹ ) and a high O, P co-doping ratio of 18 wt.%. These superior factors together enable it to deliver high specific capacitance (295 F·g ⁻¹ in 6 M KOH and 291 F·g ⁻¹ in 1 M H ₂ SO ₄ ), good cycling stability (100% capacitance retention after 10000 cycles in 1 M H ₂ SO ₄ ) and rate performance. Therefore, from the respects of environment friendliness and cost effectivity, obtaining heteroatom doped carbons from the nature might be better compared to pyrolyzing heteroatom-containing chemicals.