Effects of thermal treatment of activated carbon on the electrochemical behaviour in supercapacitors

This paper studies the electrochemical behaviour of activated carbons with different oxygen content and investigates the contribution of pseudocapacitance to the global behaviour of the samples. A mesophase-derived activated carbon was further heat treated to 600 or 1000 °C in nitrogen. The changes in texture and surface chemistry induced by the thermal treatment were deeply studied. The electrochemical behaviour of the samples was studied in two- and three-electrode cells. The contribution of pseudocapacitance was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry and by the differences of specific capacitance obtained from galvanostatic tests performed in acidic (H2SO4) and basic (KOH) media. The presence of an extra capacitance due to redox reactions has been proved both in acidic and basic media for the samples with high oxygen content, although its contribution in basic media is significantly lower. The results obtained clearly indicate that the oxygen responsible for CO-evolution participates in redox reactions, whereas the oxygen responsible for the CO2-evolution is of minor importance.