Carbon nitride template-directed fabrication of nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon for high performance supercapacitors

Facile yet rationally designed strategy for advanced electrode material synthesis is pivotal for energy storage. Herein, we report an protocol for g-C3N4 template-directed in-situ fabricating nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon sheets (NPGCs) by using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed with high-temperature pyrolysis process, which totally avoids the postsynthetic template-removal. The resultant NPGCs integrate a range of intriguing features including highly conductive interconnected structure (693 S m−1), abundant mesoporous with ultrahigh pore volume (4.35 cm3 g−1), large specific surface area (1277 m2 g−1), high N doping (8.75 wt%), and good wettability. As supercapacitor electrode, the NPGCs exhibit a quite encouraging specific capacitance of 261 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, excellent rate capability (189 F g−1 even at 100 A g−1), and outstanding cycle performance (97% capacitance retention at 10 A g−1 after 20000 cycles), which outperforms most carbon-based materials reported to date. Moreover, the assembled supercapacitors deliver a high power density of 28.4 kW kg−1 with a energy density of 6.53 Wh kg−1 at 100 A g−1. Our work is expected to open up new avenues for developing efficient nitrogen-doped porous carbon materials in a facile and viable way.