Honeycomb-like porous carbons synthesized by a soft template strategy for supercapacitors

Honeycomb-like porous carbons (HPCs) were synthesized from coal tar pitch using melamine as soft template coupled with KOH activation. The surface area of HPCs reaches 2038 m2 g−1. As electrodes for supercapacitors, the HPCs show a high specific capacitance of 221 F g−1 at 0.05 A g−1 in 6 M KOH electrolyte, an excellent rate performance with capacitance remaining at 81.0% at 20 A g−1 and a superior cycle stability with 95.3% capacitance retention after 5000 cycles. This work paves a low-cost way for large scale production of electrode materials for commercial supercapacitors.