Solvent self-doping synthesis of nitrogen/oxygen co-doped porous carbon from cellulose as high performance material for multipurpose energy storage.

Developing novel heteroatoms co-doped biomass porous carbon with low-cost, tunable physical/chemical properties, and environmental friendliness is an important candidate to face energy shortage and environmental pollution currently. Herein, a novel solvothermal avenue was designed using triethanolamine as self-doping solvent to treat rice straw powders with KOH. The rice straw with triethanolamine derived carbon (RSTCs-1) possessed hierarchical porous structure, N/O diatomic doping, and large specific surface area. The electrochemical energy storage performance of RSTCs-1 was evaluated in the systems of supercapacitors, aqueous zinc ion hybrid supercapacitors (AZHSs), and lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) respectively. As the results, the RSTCs-1 based symmetric supercapacitor exhibited the maximum energy density of ca. 98.4 Wh·kg with the excellent cycling stability. Moreover, both RSTCs-1 AZHSs and RSTCs-1 LIBs achieved the relative high discharge specific capacities of ca. 407.1 and 1906.7 mAh·g at current density of 0.1 A·g. These results highlighted the huge potential of the obtained with notable electrochemical performance acting as multifunctional electrode material for the different energy storage devices.