Wickramaarachchi Kethaki, Minakshi Manickam, Aravindh S Assa, Dabare Rukshima, Gao Xiangpeng, Jiang Zhong-Tao, Wong Kok Wai
College of Science, Health, Engineering & Education, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, Australia.
Nano and Molecular Systems Research Unit, University of Oulu, Pentti Kaiteran Katu 1, 90570 Oulu, Finland.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 May 27;12(11):1847. doi: 10.3390/nano12111847.
Porous carbon derived from grape marc (GM) was synthesized via carbonization and chemical activation processes. Extrinsic nitrogen (N)-dopant in GM, activated by KOH, could render its potential use in supercapacitors effective. The effects of chemical activators such as potassium hydroxide (KOH) and zinc chloride (ZnCl) were studied to compare their activating power toward the development of pore-forming mechanisms in a carbon electrode, making them beneficial for energy storage. GM carbon impregnated with KOH for activation (KAC), along with urea as the N-dopant (KAC), exhibited better morphology, hierarchical pore structure, and larger surface area (1356 m g) than the GM carbon activated by ZnCl (ZnAC). Moreover, density functional theory (DFT) investigations showed that the presence of N-dopant on a graphite surface enhances the chemisorption of O adsorbates due to the enhanced charge-transfer mechanism. KAC was tested in three aqueous electrolytes with different ions (LiOH, NaOH, and NaClO), which delivered higher specific capacitance, with the NaOH electrolyte exhibiting 139 F g at a 2 mA current rate. The NaOH with the alkaline cation Na offered the best capacitance among the electrolytes studied. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) model was employed to describe the effects of synthesis conditions and physicochemical and electrochemical parameters to predict the capacitance and power outputs. The proposed MLP showed higher accuracy, with an R of 0.98 for capacitance prediction.
通过碳化和化学活化过程合成了源自葡萄渣(GM)的多孔碳。经氢氧化钾(KOH)活化的GM中的外在氮(N)掺杂剂可使其在超级电容器中的潜在应用有效。研究了氢氧化钾(KOH)和氯化锌(ZnCl)等化学活化剂的作用,以比较它们对碳电极中孔形成机制发展的活化能力,这对能量存储有益。用KOH浸渍以进行活化的GM碳(KAC),以及作为N掺杂剂的尿素(KAC),比用ZnCl活化的GM碳(ZnAC)表现出更好的形态、分级孔结构和更大的表面积(1356 m²/g)。此外,密度泛函理论(DFT)研究表明,由于电荷转移机制增强,石墨表面上N掺杂剂的存在增强了O吸附质的化学吸附。在三种含不同离子的水性电解质(LiOH、NaOH和NaClO)中对KAC进行了测试,其提供了更高的比电容,在2 mA电流速率下,NaOH电解质的比电容为139 F/g。在所研究的电解质中,含碱性阳离子Na的NaOH具有最佳电容。采用多层感知器(MLP)模型来描述合成条件以及物理化学和电化学参数的影响,以预测电容和功率输出。所提出的MLP显示出更高的准确性,电容预测的R值为0.98。