An evaporation-induced tri-consistent assembly route towards nitrogen-doped carbon microfibers with ordered mesopores for high performance supercapacitors.

Nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon microfibers (NMCMFs) were prepared via an evaporation-induced tri-consistent assembly of a triblock copolymer, resols and prehydrolyzed tetraethoxy silane on natural silk followed by pyrolysis. The resultant NMCMFs inherit the advantages of both order mesoporous carbons (OMCs) and carbon microfibers (CMFs), such as uniform meso-channels, high surface area, high nitrogen content, excellent electronic conductivity as well as good flexibility. Owing to the well-designed nanostructure and the synergistic effects of the strongly coupled components, the binder-free electrodes based on NMCMFs exhibit enhanced capacity (189 F g(-1) at 5 mV s(-1)), excellent rate capability (107 F g(-1) at 100 mV s(-1)) and durability (maintained over 96% of the initial capacitance after 10,000 cycles) in electric double-layer capacitors, outperforming those of OMCs and CMFs derived from pristine silk.