Phenolic resin filled wood-derived hierarchically porous carbon monolith for high areal capacitance supercapacitors

Wood-based electrodes are widely used in supercapacitors due to their renewable and three-dimensional self-supported properties. Low space utilization of wood-based electrodes seriously restricts its practical applications. In this paper, a wood/phenolic resin composite was designed, which can effectively enhance the space utilization of wood and ensure a hierarchical porous structure. The prepared balsa wood/phenolic resin composite-derived electrode obtained a high areal capacitance (8169 mF cm–2), which is 954 % of pure balsa wood-based electrode. Moreover, the assembled symmetrical supercapacitor device exhibits outstanding electrochemical performance, displaying a high areal capacitance of 3.3 F cm–2, and a competitive volumetric energy density of 2.88 mWh cm–3. More importantly, this design has been successfully used to prepare various species wood-derived electrodes. Therefore, as a general strategy, which gives a novel idea for the design of wood-derived electrodes and may affect other fields using wood-based materials. [Display omitted] •A simple method was used to enhance the space utilization of wood-based electrodes.•This strategy has been successfully applied to a various of wood.•The assembled SSC device delivers competitive areal energy density of 0.46 mWh cm–2.