Abstract
Porous N-doped carbons hold good prospects for application in supercapacitor due to their low-cost, large surface area, good surface wettability, high electrical conductivity as well as extra pseudocapacitance. However, most synthetic methods required the tedious and multiple-step process with the assistance of hard/soft templates or the massive use of chemical reagents, and exogenous nitrogen sources, which made them difficult to realize industrial production and application. Here, we described a novel hierarchical porous N-doped carbons fabricated by a facile and sustainable approach via hydrothermal treatment and subsequent carbonization process by using renewable bamboo shoots as the starting material without any templates, additional chemical activation and nitrogen source. The obtained bamboo shoot-derived carbons possessed a large BET surface area (up to 972 m(2) g(-1)), hierarchically interconnected porous framework, rich and uniform nitrogen incorporation (3.0 at%). Benefiting from these unique features, the novel carbon-based electrode materials displayed a high capacitance of 412 F g(-1) in KOH electrolyte and long cycling life stability. Thus, an advanced electrode material for high-performance supercapacitor was successfully assembled by a simple and scalable synthesis route with abundant renewable resources freely available in nature.