Taweechai Amornsakchai and Pasit Pakawatpanurut

Carbonaceous materials like activated carbon promote electrical conductivity in batteries and supercapacitors (SCs). Biomass can offer rich resources of carbonaceous materials with the benefit of affordability, environment-friendliness, and abundant availability. This work proposes new preparation method of the biomass-derived activated carbon based on Co2+-assisted synthesis. What is unique about this preparation is the fibrous structure of the obtained activated carbon, reminiscent to the starting raw material, the pineapple leaf fiber. Moreover, due to optimal porous structure and oxygen-containing functional groups, the resulting charge-storage capability surprisingly exceeds most, if not all, performances of other biomass-derived carbons. The SC devices fabricated using the activated carbon in this work showed outstanding specific capacitance of 400.3 F/g with a superb rate capability and long-term stability.