OF NANOPOROUS CARBON AS ELECTRODES FOR SUPERCAPACITORS

Electrode material is a key element in determining the ability of energy storage for supercapacitors which should have high specific surface area (SSA) with an appropriate porous structure and also good conductivity. In this work, nanoporous carbons were prepared via pyrolysis and physical activation of polybenzoxazine which synthesized by using difference types of amine including ethylene diamine (EDA) and tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) to study the pore structure and pore size distribution. In addition, silica nanoparticles were used as hard templates to create uniform mesoporous structure. The relationships between the specific capacitance and pore structure of the nanoporous carbon electrodes were investigated in 1.0 M of H2SO4. The results from both of non-template and templated-nanoporous carbons showed that CO2 activation led to better capacitive performances. At a scan rate of 1 mV/s, non-template nanoporous carbon showed the highest specific capacitance of 337.54 F/g due to its non-uniform mesopore size which was appropriate for electrolyte ions to transfer into the pores, However, it was found that at higher scan rate, the pore size had to be larger in order to facilitate ions in the pores. In this case, templated-nanoporous carbon from AS-40 silica nanoparticles showed the highest specific capacitance of 83.72 F/g at a scan rate of 25 mV/s due to its largest mesopore size from template facilitating the ion mobility. *thanyalak.c@chula.ac.th