Investigation of saccharide-based carbons for charge storage applications

Abstract

Carbon materials have been used as the prime candidates as the charge storage materials for developing supercapacitor devices. These materials are prepared by thermal treatment of biomass precursors at elevated temperatures and further activation for effective charge storage capabilities. Herein, we show how the nature of carbon precursors tunes the charge storage of various carbohydrate-derived carbon materials. The specific capacitance showed a significant difference with the monosaccharides or the type of glycosidic linkages between the monomeric units in disaccharides. Among the prepared amorphous carbon materials, maltose-derived carbon showed a maximum specific capacitance of 278 F g−1 due to a high surface area, porosity in sub-microporous region, and oxygen containing heteroatom functionalities. The charge storage analysis of the as-prepared carbon materials provides insight into the supercapacitor properties of these materials, which will help build intricate electrochemical devices from biomass-derived carbon precursors.