Preparation of Cotton Fiber-derived Porous-carbon Materials and Their Application as High-performance Supercapacitors

In this paper, high-surface area porous carbons are produced from cotton fibers by pre-oxidation and high temperatures activation pyrolysis treatment process based on the use of K2CO3 as pore-forming agent, and the more micro-pores were formed by adding ZnCl2 during the pyrolysis treatment process. The AC-K has plentiful bigger micropores or the macropores, AC-KZn has rich micropores and the certain number of mesopores. The AC-KZn shows excellent supercapacitance properties and cycle behavior of 5000 cycles, a high specific capacitance of 135Fg (-1) can be achieved, which is higher than that of the AC-K carbon electrode.