Nitrogen-rich carbon spheres made by a continuous spraying process for high-performance supercapacitors

Supercapacitors have high power densities, high efficiencies, and long cycling lifetimes; however, to enable their wider use, their energy densities must be significantly improved. The design and synthesis of improved carbon materials with better capacitance, rate performance, and cycling stability has emerged as the main theme of supercapacitor research. Herein, we report a facile synthetic method to prepare nitrogen-rich carbon particles based on a continuous aerosol-spraying process. The method yields particles that have high surface areas, a uniform microporous structure, and are highly N-doped, resulting in a synergism that enables the construction of supercapacitors with high energy and power density for use in both aqueous and commercial organic electrolytes. Furthermore, we have used density functional theory calculations to show that the improved performance is due to the enhanced wettability and ion adsorption interactions at the carbon/electrolyte interface that result from nitrogen doping. These findings provide new insights into the role of heteroatom doping in the capacitance enhancement of carbon materials; in addition, our method offers an efficient route for large-scale production of doped carbon. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]