A facile route for nitrogen-doped hollow graphitic carbon spheres with superior performance in supercapacitors

Abstract

A novel template-free approach to prepare nitrogen-doped hollow carbon microspheres with graphitic carbon shells (NHGCSs) was reported. The obtained NHGCSs by the direct pyrolysis of solid melamine–formaldehyde (MF) resin spheres exhibit excellent capacitance performance. The specific capacitance reaches 306 F g⁻¹ at a current density of 0.1 A g⁻¹ (in 2 M H₂SO₄), and remains as high as 230 F g⁻¹ even at a high current density of 3 A g⁻¹, which indicates the optimistic prospects for using NHGCSs as supercapacitor electrode materials.