Highly crumpled graphene-like material as compression-resistant electrode material for high energy-power density supercapacitor

The design of high energy-power density supercapacitors requires advanced electrode materials with high surface area, suitable pore size for ion diffusion, as well as mechanical robustness under high-pressure compression. For conventional graphene materials with planar structure, high-pressure compression inevitably leads to reduced surface area and sluggish ion diffusion due to restacking. Here, we present highly crumpled nitrogen-doped graphene-like material (CNG) with abundant wrinkles in nanoscale utilizing one-step pyrolysis method to enable compression-resistant supercapacitive performance. The highly curved structure enabled CNG to retain large specific surface area (952 m 2 g −1 ), high pore volume in the range of 2–10 nm (1.3 cm 3 g −1 ) and little capacitance loss even under high pressure up to 30 MPa. The application of CNGs as electrode materials for supercapacitors displays a high energy density of 92 Wh kg −1 in ionic liquid with excellent power density and cycling stability.