Nitrogen/oxygen co-doped carbon nanofoam derived from bamboo fungi for high-performance supercapacitors

Heteroatoms doped porous carbon materials derived from cost-effective biomass play an important role in the sustainable development of supercapacitors. Herein, we report an environment-friendly and scalable technical route to fabricate nitrogen/oxygen co-doping hierarchical porous three-dimensional carbon nanofoam (ZCH-PC) using zinc carbonate hydroxide ([ZnCO3]2·[Zn(OH)2]3) as an activation template and biomass (bamboo fungi) as the carbon source. The carbon nanofoam electrode shows a high specific capacitance of 367 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1 as well as long-term cycles life over 10000 cycles. Most importantly, the assemble symmetric supercapacitor delivers a remarkable energy density of 24.6 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 400 W kg−1. These results confirm a facile and sustainable approach for production three-dimensional carbon nanofoam for electrochemical energy storage applications. •The carbon nanofoam (ZCH-PC) is obtained by zinc carbonate hydroxide activation.•ZCH-PC possesses 3D hierarchical pore structure and reasonable heteroatom groups.•ZCH-PC displays high capacitance (367 F g−1) and excellent rate capability.•Thesymmetric supercapacitor shows a high energy density of 24.6 Wh kg−1.