Rational design of dense microporous carbon derived from coal tar pitch towards high mass loading supercapacitors

The compact carbon materials with huge specific surface area (SSA) and proper pore structure are highly desirable towards high-performance supercapacitors at the cell level. However, to well balance of porosity and density is still an on-going task. Herein, a universal and facile strategy of pre-oxidation–carbonization–activation is employed to prepare the dense microporous carbons from coal tar pitch. The optimized sample POCA800 not only possesses a well-developed porous structure with the SSA of 2142 m2 g−1 and total pore volume (Vt) of 1.540 cm3 g−1, but also exhibits a high packing density of 0.58 g cm−3 and proper graphitization. Owing to these advantages, POCA800 electrode at areal mass loading of 10 mg cm−2 shows a high specific capacitance of 300.8 F g−1 (174.5 F cm−3) at 0.5 A g−1 and good rate performance. The POCA800 based symmetrical supercapacitor with a total mass loading of 20 mg cm−2 displays a large energy density of 8.07 Wh kg−1 at 125 W kg−1 and remarkable cycling durability. It is revealed that the prepared density microporous carbons are promising for practical applications.