Lamellar hierarchical lignin-derived porous carbon activating the capacitive property of polyaniline for high-performance supercapacitors

Lignin porous carbons show good potential as carbon electrode materials for supercapacitors, but face problem of low capacitance. Combining lignin porous carbons with polyaniline can achieve high capac-itance. However, capacitance degradation resulting from the poor compatibility between lignin porous carbons and polyaniline has been the major obstacle for their application. In this work, three lignin por-ous carbons with different geometries were used as the hosts to anchor polyaniline for carbon/polyani-line composites via in-situ oxidative polymerization, and the compatibility between lignin porous carbons and polyaniline was investigated. It was determined the lamellar hierarchical lignin porous carbon with crumpled nanosheets can provide a large accessible surface area for the heterogeneous nucleation of aniline, which ensures uniform loading of interpenetrating polyaniline nanofibers. Benefiting from the interpenetrating conductive network and enhanced compatibility, the lamellar hierarchical porous carbon/polyaniline composite possesses a high capacitance of up to 643 F/g at 1.0 A/g and a sufficient capacitance of 390 F/g at 30.0 A/g. This work therefore provides design guidance for carbon hosts in highperformance supercapacitor composite electrodes.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.