Electrostatic self-assembly of hierarchical porous carbon microparticles

► Hierarchical porous carbon microparticles (HPCMs) are obtained. ► Cationic surfactant as a pore stabilizer is used in the synthesis of porous gel. ► HPCMs has a specific capacitance of 194 F g−1 and high areal capacitance of 152 mF cm−2. ► A method to step-by-step self-assembly of charged microparticles is demonstrated. ► HPCMs pseudocapacitance could be increased up to 900 F g−1 adsorbing redox molecules.