Recent Progress of Biomass-Derived Carbon for Supercapacitors: A Review

Carbon materials are important for the commercial production of supercapacitors and they are very crucial electrode materials. The porous carbon prepared with biomass materials as the precursor is of significance due to the sustainable supply, environmental friendly, and low cost. Biomass-derived carbon (BDC) has been widely investigated and reported as the electrode of supercapacitors. In this work, the recent advancement of BDC for supercapacitors in the last three years is reviewed. The energy storage mechanism, synthesis techniques and biomass classification of BDC are summarized at the beginning of this work. Some new typical cases with different biomass resources as raw materials are addressed. Then, effective strategies to further improve the specific capacitance of BDC including heteroatom doping, designing composites, novel processes, enhancing graphitic degree and unique preparation methods are concluded in detail. Finally, the challenges and future perspectives of porous BDC for supercapacitors are outlined.