The large electrochemical capacitance of nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon derived from egg white by using a ZnO template

In this paper, a novel hierarchically structured mesoporous carbon material doped with nitrogen is prepared by using a two-step template method, of which egg white is the precursor for carbon and the nanostructured ZnO is the template. The unique composition and structure of the carbon resulted in very promising electrochemical energy storage performance. Tested as a supercapacitor, the carbon exhibited a capacitance of 205 F g −1 at a discharge current density of 0.5 A g −1 ; and, its cyclic performance is dramatically enhanced sustaining greater than 97% of its original capacitance after 5000 charge-discharge cycles. This work displays a simple method to prepare porous carbon electrodes, and provides a vivid example to rationally produce carbon materials from natural sources in pseudocapacitors. We used ZnO nanoparticles as a hard template and egg white as a precursor to successfully synthesize nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon materials and the as-prepared material was further used as an electrode material for supercapacitor applications.