Black aspergillus-derived highly porous carbon fibers for capacitive applications

The increasing demand for high-performance supercapacitors has aroused great interest in fabricating materials with excellent specific capacitance and cycling stability. Here we report a porous activated carbon (PAC) derived from the pyrolysis of the renewable filamentous fungi in an inert atmosphere. PAC exhibits a high specific surface area of 1800 m(2) g(-1) with hierarchical structures. The N doped PAC electrode shows a remarkable gravimetric capacitance of 298 F g(-1), and excellent cycling stability with 100% capacitance retention after 10,000 cycles. In addition, the rate capability of this material is pretty good and better than that of previously reported graphene and activated carbon-based materials. Furthermore, the as-assembled symmetric supercapacitor device exhibits good gravimetric energy density of 10.32 W h Kg(-1). This work provides a new sustainable source of filamentous fungi for fabricating high performance porous carbon materials for supercapacitors.