Peanut-Shell-like Porous Carbon from Nitrogen-Containing Poly‑N‑phenylethanolamine for High-Performance Supercapacitor

An efficient soft-template method is proposed for the synthesis of peanut shell-like porous carbon as high-performance supercapacitor electrode materials. The procedure is based on the pyrolysis and chemical activation processes using N-phenylethanolamine as precursor and KOH as activation agent. In a three-electrode system, the resultant carbon material has a specific capacitance of 356 F g^–1 at 1 A g^–1 and a good stability over 1000 cycles. Besides, at a high current density of 30 A g^–1, it has a specific capacitance of 249 F g^–1 and maintains 96% after 10 000 cycles. In two-electrode cell configuration, it delivers about 21.53 Wh kg^–1 at a current density of 20 A g^–1, which is about 7 times higher than the commercial device (<3 Wh kg^–1). Both high specific capacitance and excellent cycling stabilities guarantee its utilization in supercapacitors.