Mesoporous carbon spheres with uniformly penetrating channels and their use as a supercapacitor electrode material

An optimized nanostructure design for electrode materials of supercapacitors was realized by introducing furfuryl alcohol into as-prepared surfactant-containing spherical host and generating a robust mesoporous structure. The structural characterization shows that the carbon spheres inherit the regular mesopore structure and high surface area of the template and possess a uniform particle size containing well-ordered channels throughout the spheres. By adjusting the initial molar ratio of H₂O to tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), the pore volumes of the templated carbons vary from 0.4 to 0.6 cm³·g^-1 and surface areas are in the range of 610 and 944 m²·g^-1. Furthermore, NiO nanoparticles were incorporated into the carbon spheres by air oxidation of the Ni-containing samples. The use of these spheres in electrode materials for electric double layer capacitors was investigated. The electrochemical measurements show that the specific capacitance of the ordered mesoporous carbon spheres (OMCs-2) can increase by 40% to 205.3 F·g^-1 by the addition of 3 wt% NiO.