Facile synthesis of microporous N-doped carbon material and its application in supercapacitor

Carbon materials are attracting increasing attention because they are widely applied in batteries, supercapacitors , catalysis and other fields. In this work, we report a simple one-pot method to produce nitrogen-doped carbon materials (NCMs) by reacting N-bromosuccinimide with calcium carbide . The obtained carbon structures are partially graphitic, with significant amount of nitrogen doped into the carbon network. The texture properties of NCMs vary with the preparative temperature. The NCM prepared at 700 °C possessed dual micropores (7 Å and 12 Å) and mesopores with the largest specific surface area of 1436 m 2  g −1 . It exhibited good charge storing performance when used in a capacitor, with a high specific capacitance of 214.8 F g −1 at the current density of 0.2 A g −1 . The capacitance remains 96% after 5000 cycles. This work provides a simple way to synthesize N-containing carbon materials with excellent charge storage properties, which may be used to synthesize other tailored carbon materials with various properties.