Low temperature activation of charcoal for double layer supercapacitor electrode

Over the past few centuries, the availability of energy has altered the course of human history. With the advent of new energy sources first fossil fuels, then nuclear, hydropower, and now various renewable resources, and so our capacity for producing and using energy has expanded. Thus, super capacitor (SC) has emerged for the storage of energy and researchers have paid close attention to fabricate SC using various carbon materials specially activated carbon (ACs) from wastes or by-products of agriculture having financial and environmental advantages. Therefore, this work is aimed to prepare ACs from oak wood charcoal with high surface area and electrochemical properties. Surface area and pore size ACs are controlled by varying the amount of activating agent. Materials characterizations reveal that the micropores are produced after activation and used for fabrication of electrode of SC. The cyclic voltammetry, charging- discharging, and electrical impedance spectra are used to track the electrochemical characteristics. The results show the prepared AC based SC has good specific capacitance, power density, and energy density with excellent cycling stability. (author)