Supercapacitor Performances of Coal Tar Pitch Based Spherical Active Carbons Fabricated by the SiO2 Template Method

Abstract

In accordance with the suspension method, the coal tar pitch-based SiO2/C composite sphere precursors are successfully synthesized by using the coal tar pitches as carbon resources and a template agent of SiO2. After sequentially carrying out the processes of carbonizations, acid pickling and activations, the coal tar pitch-based spherical active carbons are successfully fabricated, and their supercapacitor characteristics are investigated in detail. The storage type of the fabricated active carbons mainly manifests the obvious double-layer capacitor behaviors. The specific capacitance of fabricated spherical active carbons is 153.5 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1. Furthermore, after cycling 10,000 times, the specific capacitance of obtained spherical active carbons still remains 151.19 F g−1 at 1 A g−1. Considering the fact that the coal tar pitches are the general industrial raw materials, the functional coal tar pitch-based spherical active carbons exhibit a significantly applicable perspective in the field of fabrications of super-capacitors.

Keywords

• Coal tar pitches
• Supercapacitors
• Spherical Active Carbon (SAC)
• Double-Layer Capacitor (DLC)
• SiO2 template