The effect of oxygen and nitrogen functional groups on the electrochemical performance of ordered carbon

Abstract

Ordered carbon (OC) has been synthesised via replication strategy by using Santa Barbara Amorphous (SBA)-15 as a template. The successful replication process has been proven by nitrogen adsorption-desorption analyzer and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The OC showed well-aligned mesopore system, similar to the SBA-15 template. The oxygen and nitrogen functional groups introduced were identified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Electrochemical performance of the oxygen containing OC (OC-O), nitrogen containing OC (OC-N), and oxygen nitrogen containing OC (OC-ON) was then evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) using a three electrode system in 1M KOH aqueous electrolyte. The OC-O, OC-N, and OC-ON showed significant increment in specific capacitance, CS and exhibited good capacitance retention (CR, %) over high scan rate and current density.