High Surface Area Activated Carbon Synthesized from Bio-Based Material for Supercapacitor Application

High surface area porous activated carbon samples were synthesized from banana peels by a conventional activation process at the temperature of 750 degrees C. The as-activated carbon samples were characterized by both XRD and TEM measurements. When fabricated as supercapacitor electrode materials, these as-activated carbon samples can show double-layer capacitance characteristics with the specific capacitance values of 154 and 140 F/g at the scan rates of 5 and 70 mV/s, respectively. The high retention (91%) can be obtained with the scan rate increasing from 5 to 70 mV/s. The current results suggest that these as-activated carbon materials from bio-based banana peels can be potentially used as economic, sustainable and high-performance supercapacitor electrode materials.