Preparation of Fe/N co-doped hierarchical porous carbon nanosheets derived from chitosan nanofibers for high-performance supercapacitors

Due to the low specific capacitance and small specific surface area of conventional carbon materials used as electrode materials for double-layer capacitors, the search for more ideal materials and ingenious preparation methods remains a major challenge. In this study, fractional porous carbon nanosheets were prepared by co-doping Fe and N with chitosan as nitrogen source. The advantage of this method is that the carbon nanosheets can have a large number of pore structures and produce a large specific surface area. The presence of Fe catalyzes the graphitization of carbon in the carbon layer during carbonization process, and further increases the specific surface area of the electrode material. This structure provides an efficient ion and electron transport pathway, which enables more active sites to participate in the REDOX reaction, thus significantly enhancing the electrochemical performance of SCs. The specific surface area of CS-800 is up to 1587 m2 g−1. When the current density is 0.5 A g−1, the specific capacitance of CS-800 reaches 308.84 F g−1, and remains 84.61 % of the initial value after 10,000 cycles. The Coulomb efficiency of CS-800 is almost 100 % after a long cycle, which indicates that CS-800 has more ideal double-layer capacitance and pseudo capacitance.