Nitrogen-doped carbon nanofoam derived from amino acid chelate complex for supercapacitor applications

•N-doped carbon nanofoam (N-MCNF) prepared using amino acid chelate metal complex.•N-MCNF possesses high surface area of 1564 m2 g−1, and pore volume of 1.767 cm3 g−1.•N-MCNF delivers maximum energy maximum energy density of 63.4 Wh kg−1 at 25 °C.•N-MCNF exhibits excellent cycle life of 32,500 cycles at high current density of 20 Ag−1.•N-MCNF supercapacitor device is utilized for solar energy harvesting application.

We report a novel strategy to fabricate the nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon nanofoam structures (N-MCNF), derived from magnesium amino acid chelate complex (Mg-acc-complex) for its application towards high performance supercapacitor (SCs) system. A series of N-MCNF with well-connected carbon nanofoam structure have been developed by varying the synthesis temperature. The fabricated N-MCNF material possesses a high surface area (1564 m2 g−1) and pore volume (1.767 cm3 g−1) with nitrogen content of 3.42 wt%. A prototypical coin cell type symmetric N-MCNF SC device has been assembled with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate [EMIMBF4] ionic liquid electrolyte, and evaluated for SCs studies. The N-MCNF with high textural properties delivers unprecedented SC performance, such as high specific capacitance (204 Fg−1 at 0.25 Ag−1, 25 °C), high energy density (63.4 Wh kg−1), high power density (35.9 kW kg−1) and long-term cycle life (32,500 cycles). Significantly, N-MCNF materials exhibited high power rate performance, at 500 mV−1 (115 Fg−1) and 25 Ag−1 (166 Fg−1) owing to the uniform mesopore size distribution (∼4 nm). The N-MCNF SC device delivered maximum energy densities of 83.4 and 93.3 Wh kg−1 at 60 °C and 90 °C, respectively. Such outstanding N-MCNF SC device is successfully demonstrated in solar energy harvester applications.

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