Speaker
Description
Nowadays, activated carbons (ACs) derived from biomass waste are prom-ising as materials for various applications, particularly supercapacitors, due to their high surface area and porosity, low cost, natural abundance, power delivery performance, and electrochemical stability. In this work, ACs were derived from waste corn cob through carbonization at 600 °C followed by chemical activation using zinc chloride (ZnCl2) at 800 °C in various propor-tions, including 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, and 1:4. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results revealed that the ACs exhibited an amorphous carbon phase without any impurity phases and had similar chemical functional groups (i.e., C=C and C-O-C). The morphology of the ACs showed the development of a porous structure compared to raw corncob and non-activated samples. The specific surface area of ACs gradu-ally increased with increasing the ZnCl2 content, which was much larger than that of the non-activated sample. The porosity of ACs was mainly con-tributed by micropores, with a small proportion of meso-macropores. Fur-thermore, capacitive properties were characterized by electrochemical meas-urements using a three-electrode system via cyclic voltammetry (CV), gal-vanostatic charging-discharging (GCD), electrochemical impedance spec-troscopy (EIS), and stability tests in 6 M KOH aqueous electrolyte. This study provides valuable information on the conversion of waste corncob into ACs as electrode materials for supercapacitors.
