Recent development of carbon electrode materials for electrochemical supercapacitors

Supercapacitors have gained much attention due to their remarkable merits such as stable cycle performance, high power density and excellent charge and discharge performance at high rate. From this perspective, carbon-based materials are widely explored as the active electrode materials for supercapacitors by taking advantages of hierarchical porous structure, excellent chemical stability, multistage pore structure, high surface area, and excellent conductivity. Various studies have explored many methods to utilize carbon-based electrodes. The large amount of defects inside carbon materials including functional groups, heteroatoms, name as foreign-doping, can provide pseudocapacitance. Meanwhile, self-doping (voids, vacancies, defects, etc.) may also enhance the electric double-layer capacitance. In this context, a brief overview of carbon materials for supercapacitor is expounded, including their characteristics, development process and the future challenges, providing a referential guide to those new to this field.