Carbon, which includes carbon black, graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT), is conventionally

uses as a support for electrocatalysts because of its high electronic conductivity and high specific
area owing to their highly porous structure. Also, porous carbons are good support because they
are resistant to acidic and alkaline media, inexpensive, good recycling characteristics, surface
hydrophobicity, low density, and most importantly, they can be introduced with various
functionalities by several activation, functionalization and carbonization methods. (1) Lately,
there has been a trend to synthesize porous carbon materials derived from biomass resources as
alternative to commercial grades because they are cheaper, easy to obtain, nontoxic, and have
other favourable properties. (2) This approach highlights the seventh principle of green
chemistry, i.e., the use of a renewable feedstock rather than depleting whenever technically and
economically practicable. (3) Moreover, this also complements natures own way of using
photosynthetic products for the generation of useful, efficient materials that mankind can use
particularly on catalysis applications.
It has been demonstrated that graphitic N could greatly increase the limiting current density, and
pyridinic N could improve the onset potential, while other N species such as pyrrolic N or NO have
little efect on the electrochemical performance of carbon materials.

exhibiting a 3D network, consisted of macroporous cores, mesoporous channels, and micropores.

Nevertheless, very few reports on carbons
with a hierarchical porous system derived from biomasses have
appeared in the literature, and the surface areas of the biomass-derived
porous carbons were usually low [9].

To investigate the morphological evolution of the hierarchical porous structure, SEM images were
observed on the
samples obtained by annealing at various temperatures. As shown in Fig. 5a, at 500 _C, PPy precursor
has been carbonized
and the pores with diameter in the range of 20200 nm are formed, which is speculated to be caused
by the evaporation of
water from hydrophobic carbon during the activation process. With increasing annealing temperature,
the reaction between KOH and C occurs (eqn (1)),35 the pores are further developed with the
consumption of C, and the size increases to _300 nm
at 600 _C and _500 nm at 700 _C. When the temperature increases to 750 _C, the interconnected
carbon walls are partly
burnt out, which may be due to the further reaction between K2O and C (eqn (2)(4)).16 The escape of
CO and CO2 from the
carbon makes the pores become larger. (5)
6KOH + 2C / 2K + 3H2 + 2K2CO3 (1)
K2CO3 /K2O + CO2 (2)
K2CO3 / 2C + 2K2O (3)
K2O+ C / 2K + CO (4)

1. De S, Balu AM, van der Waal JC, Luque R. Biomass-Derived Porous Carbon Materials:
Synthesis and Catalytic Applications. ChemCatChem 2015 Jun 1; 7 (11): 1608-1629.

2. Hu B, Wang K, Wu L, Yu S-H, Antonietti M, Titirici M-M. Engineering Carbon Materials

from the Hydrothermal Carbonization Process of Biomass. Adv. Mater. 2010; 22: 813828.
3. Anastas PT, Warner JC. Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press:
New York, 1998, p.30.
4. D
5. Qie L, Chen W, Xu H, Xiong X, Jiang Y, Zou F, Hu X, Xin Y, Zhang Z, Huang Y.
Synthesis of functionalized 3D hierarchical porous carbon for high-performance
supercapacitors. Energy Environ. Sci. 2013; 6: 2497-2504