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In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous

carbons for supercapacitor application
Jiyuan Liang a,b,∗, Jinxing Zhao a, Yuxiao Li a, Kuan-Ting Lee c, Chang Liu a, Huan Lin a,
Qi Cheng a, Qian Lan a, Lingfang Wu a, Shun Tang a, Liang An a, Yuan-Cheng Cao a,b,∗
a
Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Chemical Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Jianghan University, Wuhan 430056, China
b
Flexible Display Materials and Technology Co-Innovation Centre of Hubei Province, Jianghan University, Wuhan 430056, China
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsin-Chu 30013, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A simple, effective, and scalable mix and pyrolysis process was developed for preparing rice husk-derived
Received 4 July 2017 porous carbon. The process involves only mixing and pyrolyzing of carbon–silica composites (product of
Revised 20 September 2017
pre-carbonized rice husk) and Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) powders under inert atmosphere to form
Accepted 1 October 2017
porous carbon materials without any SiO2 residue. The fabrication process does not use any toxic or cor-
Available online xxx
rosive solution to etch the SiO2 , which was more suitable for large scale production. The obtained porous
Keywords: carbon was endowed a desirable specific surface area (1550 m2 /g) and porous structure with high meso-
Rice husk porosity of 52%. Electrochemical investigation measurements showed that the obtained porous carbon
Carbon materials represents a good electrode candidate for supercapacitor, which displayed a high specific capacitance of
Electrode 220 F/g at a current density of 0.5 A/g. In addition, the electrode displayed excellent cycling stability with
SiO2 a capacitance retention of about 98% over 10,0 0 0 cycles.
Supercapacitor
© 2017 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the growing ultilize of energy and strengthening of
people’s environmental protection consciousness, researchers are
constantly looking for new technology for developing renewable
energy sources. Except that develop new energy, energy storage
technology also should be paid attention to enhance the effec-
tive utlization of renewable energies. Supercapacitors also called
electrochemical capacitors have attracted a great deal of attention
among various electrical energy storage devices due to their high
power density, fast charging-discharing time and long cycling
life [1,2]. According to established charge storage mechanisms,
supercapacitors can be classfied into two kinds: electrochemical
double layer capacitors and pseudocapacitors. The former stores
electric energy based on the electrosorption of electrolyte ions at
the electrodes/electrolyte interfaces, whereas the latter primarily
originates from fast superficial Faradaic redox reactions between
the electrode materials and electrolyte ions [3–5].
Carbon materials have attracted great attentions in catalysis,
adsorption, energy storage and conversion [6,7]. During the past
decade, porous carbon materials are widely studied as the elec-
∗
Corresponding authors at: Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Chemical Materials
and Devices, Ministry of Education, Jianghan University, Wuhan 430056, China
E-mail addresses: liangjy2004@126.com (J. Liang), caosome@126.com (Y.-C. Cao).
trode materials for energy storage due to their high specific sur-
face area, high thermal and chemical stability, excellent conductiv-
ity and low cost [8–10]. Biomass derived porous carbon materials
have been prepared and used in electrochemical energy systems
due to their easy regeneration, abundant and low cost [7,11,12].
Until now, various biomass materials have been used as the car-
bon sources to prepare porous carbon, including peanut shell [13],
fungus [14], cotton wool [15], pomelo peel [16,17], shrimp shells
[18], and so on.
Rice husk, the hard protecting covering of grain, is considered
as the agricultural waste of rice. Unfortunately, most of rice husk
is burn out, which would cause the environmental pollution. The
compositions of rice husk are cellulose(38%), hemicelluloses(18%),
lignin(22%) and SiO2 [19]. Thus, it can be utilized as the carbon
precursor to prepare the activated carbon materials under an inert
atmosphere. Actually, during the past decade, rice husk has been
widely studied and prepared into porous carbon materials. How-
ever, in order to obtain silica-free rice husk-derived carbon mate-
rials, silica are removed using HF or alkaline solution (NaOH, KOH)
at elevated temperature [19–21]. Unfortunatly, HF is highly toxic
and bad for human health, while alkaline solution treatment is
time consuming and strong corrosive. Obviously, HF solution and
alkaline solution are the major obstacle in industrial applications.
What’s more, most researches used a large number of activating
agent to increase the specific surface area of porous carbon, which

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
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Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
application, Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
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2 J. Liang et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 000 (2017) 1–8
also leads to high cost [22–24]. Therefore, it is necessary to pro-
duce porous carbon derived from rice husk from the viewpoint of
economic, environmental and safety.
Based on the above discussion, the aim of this study is to
report an expeditious strategy to prepare high performance rice
husk-derived porous carbon via Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in-
situ silica etching process without using any toxic HF solution or
alkaline solution. Compared with the traditional rice husk based
porous carbon material preparation, the present method integrates
the rice husk carbonization and SiO2 etching into one procedure,
which affords a convenient and energy-saving route to the synthe-
sis of rice husk based porous carbon. The as-obtained carbon ma-
terials are tested as the electrode materials for supercapacitor. This
method also provides a paradigm for the SiO2 etching strategy.
2. Experimental
2.1. Preparation of rice husk-derived carbon (RHC)
The rice husk used in this work was bought from Lvhuai agri-
culture company, Anhui province, China. SiO2 contents in fresh rice
husk is about 13 wt% based on the result of TG analysis (Fig. S1).
The synthesis process of rice husk based porous carbonprepared by
PTFE treatment process is illustrated in Scheme 1. In a typical as-
say, the rice husk was pre-carbonized in a tube furnace at 600 °C
for 1 h at a heating rate of 5 °C/min, and the carbon–silica com-
posite was obtained, and then the carbon-silica sample was ground
into powder like in a motor. Subsequently, the carbon–silica com-
posite powers and PTFE powders were mixed together with vari-
ous mass ratio. Following, the well mixed powder was transfered
to the ceramic boat and firstly calcined at 600 °C for 30 min, and
then heated up to 900 °C for 2 h at a constant heating rate of
5 °C/min under Ar atmosphere in a horizon tube furnace. After
cooling down to room temperature, rice husk derived porous car-
bon was obtained and denoted as PRHC.
For comparison purpose, carbon–silica composite was also
treated with HF soultion. In short, rice husk was directly pyrolyzed
at 900 °C for 2 h with a heating rate of 5 °C/min under Ar at-
mosphere. The resulting sample was treated with 1 M HF aqueous
solution for 24 h at room temperature to remove SiO2 . Finally, the
sample was washed with deionized water and dried overnight at
90 °C. The obtained sample was labeled as CRHC.
2.2. Characterization
The morphology of the sample was characterized by field
emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM, Hitachi SU8010)
equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX) system. X-ray
diffraction (XRD) was recored with Rigaku D Max/20 0 0 PC powder
diffractometer with Cu Kα radiation. Raman spectra were recored
on the Raman Scattering Spectroscopy (Renishaw 20 0 0 system) us-
ing 632 nm laser light source. The electrical conductivity of the
sample was measured using a four-point probe meter (Keithley,
2400). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was performed on a Ther-
mal Analysis thermogravimetric analyser at a heating rate of 5 and
10 °C/min under nitrogen and air atmosphere, respectively. Nitro-
gen adsorption–desorption isotherms were conducted at 77 K on
a physical adsorption instrument (Micromeritics, ASAP 2020). The
sample was degassed at 150 °C for 10 h before the analysis.
2.3. Electrochemical tests
Prior to electrode preparation, commercial nickel foam was pre-
treated in a 3 M HCl solution with sonication for 10 min to remove
the NiO layer, and then washed thoroughly with deionized wa-
Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
application, Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
[m5G;October 23, 2017;14:2]
CRHC
(002)
Intensity (a.u.)
(101)
(101)
PRHC
(200)
(111)
(102)
C-SiO2
JCPDS No. 39-1425
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
2 theta (degree)
Fig. 1. XRD patterns of C–SiO2 , CRHC and PRHC.
ter and absolute ethanol, respectively. Finally, the pretreated nickel
foam was dried in an electric vacuum oven at room temperature.
All the electrochemical tests were performed on electrochemi-
cal working station (Autolab). For the prepartion of working elec-
trode, a mixture slurry of 80 wt% of the active materials, 10 wt%
polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and 10 wt% acetylene black was
pasted onto the pretreated nickel foam current collector and dried
under vacume at 80 °C. The average mass loading on the nickel
foam was 2 mg. The electrolyte was 6 M KOH solution. In addi-
tion to the working electrode, platinum wire and saturated calomel
electrode (SCE) were used as the counter and reference electrode,
respectively. Electochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) mea-
surements were carried out by applying an amplitude of 5 mV in
the frequency range from 100 kHz to 10 mHz. Sepcific capacitances
derived from discharge curves can be calculated from the following
equation:
C = It/mV (1)
where C (F/g) is the specific capacitance; I (A) is the discharge cur-
rent; t (s) is the discharge time; V (V) is the voltage window; m
(g) is the mass of active materials loaded in the working electrode.
3. Results and discussion
The crystal structure of the rice husk after pre-carbonzation
was investigated by XRD. As shown in Fig. 1, the crystalline SiO2
refraction peaks (JCPDS No. 39-1425) can be clearly detected. This
suggests that silica–carbon composite is formed during thermal
carbonization. It is interesting to find that SiO2 refraction peaks are
disappeared after pyrolizing the mixture of carbon–silica sample
and PTFE powder, while two broad diffraction peaks centered at
25 and 44° are attributed to the characteristic diffraction peaks of
graphite of the (002) and (101) planes, respectively. Similar to for-
mer studies, XRD result also indicates that SiO2 species can be re-
moved thoughly by HF solution treatment. What’s more, compared
with the CRHC, the (002) diffraction peak of PRHC is more broad,
indicating that the crystalline structure is markedly destroyed by
PTFE treatment in the chemical etching process. TG analysis was
also performed to test the residual SiO2 . From Fig. S2, it is demon-
strated that the weight dropped to zero after 800 °C, further re-
vealing that SiO2 can be clearly etched through the PTFE treatment
during the pyrolysis process.
The morphology and structure of samples was examined by
SEM as shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen from Fig. 2a to c that an
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Fig. 2. Digital photos of (a) fresh rice husk, (b) carbon–silica composites, and (c) PRHC. (d, e) SEM images of carbon–silica. (f, g) SEM images of CRHC. (h, i) SEM images of
PRHC.

obvious physical change has occurred following the annealing and
etching procedures, going from yellow rice dusk to a black powder.
Fig. 2d and e demonstrate the corresponding SEM image of the
outside and inside surface of precarbonized sampe (carbon–silica
composite), respectively. As can be seen, the nature microstruc-
ture of rice husk can be well preserved after pre-carbonization.
There are many bulges with globular structure on the outside sur-
face and the inside surface is relative smooth. As the SEM im-
ages in Fig. 2f and g illustrate, CRHC broke into many non-uniform
particles with wide particle size distribution. For the PRHC, inter-
estingly, the bulged structure can be retained, but the surface of
bulges become more rough and much more pores can be already
observed from the SEM micrograph of the PRHC sample (Fig. 2h),
in constract to the relative smooth surface of pre-carbonized rice
husk shown in Fig. 2d. Furthermore, porous structure can be ob-
served in the sample (Fig. 2i); these opened pores may be gen-
erated from the decomposition gases of PTFE. This porous strc-
ture also can be served as the ion buffers and shorten the elec-
trolyte ions diffusion pathway to the active sites [25,26]. Therefore,
a high specific surface area and a hierarchical porous structure in
the PRHC are expected. In order to observe the chemical composi-
tion of all the specimens, EDX test was also performed in this pa-
per. As expected, the corresponding EDX spectrum (Fig. S3) shows
that C and O are the major elements in the PRHC, indicating the
complete removal of the SiO2 , which is also confirmed by TG anal-
ysis in Fig. S2.
Raman spectroscopy was employed to evaluated the physical
structural differences of the samples. As can be seen in Fig. 3,
all the samples display two distinct Raman peaks at around 1350
and 1580 cm−1 , which corresponding to the D band and G band,

Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
application, Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
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Fig. 3. Raman spectrum of CRHC and PRHC.
respectively. The D band is a common feature of all disordered
graphitic carbon, while the G band is related to graphitic carbon
phase with an sp2 electronic configuration [27,28]. In addition, the
intensity ratio of the D to G band represents the extent of graphiti-
zation achieved in the carbon materials [29,30]. The ID /IG ratio for
the PRHC is 1.015, which is larger than that of CRHC (0.772), im-
plying its lower degree of graphitization. This can be attributed to
the structure defects caused by the PTFE etching treatment, which
may destroy the graphite microcrystal zone in the carbon matrix.
Despite the high density of structure defects, the conductivity of
PRHC reaches 600 S/m, which is lower than that of CRHC(820 S/m)
and comparable to highly crystallized CNTs [31].
Nitrogen adsorption–desorption test was conducted to charac-
terize the porous structure of carbon materials. The nitrogen ad-
sorption/desorption isotherms of PRHC and CRHC are displayed in
Fig. 4a. As illustrated in the figure, both of the samples demon-
strate IV type isotherm with hysteresis loop of type 2 from 0.4
to 1.0 of the relative pressure, associates the capillary condensa-
tion taking place in mesopores, indicating the existence of a large
amount of mesopores in the samples [3]. The mesopore is very
probably caused by the etched SiO2 particles. This is confirmed
by the pore size distributions shown in Fig. 4b, a sharp peak lo-
caked at the center of 4 nm. In addition, the initial N2 uptake
a b
Fig. 4. (a) Nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherms and (b) pore size distribution of CRHC and PRHC.
Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
application, Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
[m5G;October 23, 2017;14:2]
Table 1.
Pore structure parameters of CRHC and PRHC.
Sample Stol (m2 /g) Smicro (m2 /g) Smeso (m2 /g) Ratioa Pore volume Dp (nm)b
(cm3 /g)
CRHC 827 623 204 0.25 0.67 2.9
PRHC 1552 750 802 0.52 1.05 2.7
a. Ratio of mesopore area to total area.
b. Average pore diameter (nm).
at relatively low pressure of PRHC sample is higher than those
of CRHC, revealing generation of much more micropores through
PTFE treatment. On the one hand, the micropores are resulted from
the rapid volatilization of light organics and amorphization of car-
bonaceous segments during carbonization [32]. On the other hand,
it can be conjectured that PTFE also can be considered as the acti-
vating agent to generate more micropores. The corresponding spe-
cific surface areas and porous properties of the two samples are
summarized in Table 1 for comparison. The Brunauer–Emmett–
Teller (BET) specific surface areas were calculated to be 827 and
1552 m2 /g for CRHC and PRHC, respectively. It is noted that micro-
pore surface area dominates the total specific areas of CRHC. As for
the PRHC, the increase in specific surface area mainly came from
the contribution of mesopores, with contribution fraction of meso-
pore increasing from 0.25 to 0.52. With the above observations,
PTFE treatment not only can generate a small number of micro-
pores but also can generate much more mesopores. The pore vol-
ume of PRHC is twice larger than that of CRHC. The average pore
diameter of CRHC and PRHC derived from Barrett–Joyner–Halenda
(BJH) modle is about 2.9 and 2.7 nm, respectively. From the above
discussion, the porous structure and high specific surface area are
expected to enchance the electrochemical performance in terms of
the electrolyte ions transport and adsorption.
Based on the above characterization and discussions, the prepa-
ration mechanism of PRHC is proposed. Firstly, in order to investi-
gate the thermal property of PTFE powder, TG test was performed
and the result was shown in Fig. S4. It can be seen that PTFE
powder can be completely decomposed and without any residues
when the temperature increases up to 600 °C under inert atmo-
sphere. Thus, it can be concluded that there will no any PTFE
residues in the final products when co-pyrolyze C–SiO2 and PTFE
composite powders. According to literatures, PTFE can decompose
into tetrafluoroethylene (C2 F4 ) under inert atmosphere, which will
in situ react with SiO2 and formation of gaseous SiF4 [33,34]. The
gaseous SiF4 species can be carried away by the carrier gas, and
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a b

Fig. 5. Cyclic voltammetry curves of (a) CRHC and PRHC at a scan rate of 10 mV/s and (b) PRHC electrode at increasing scan rates.

finally porous carbon materials can be obtained. Unlike the con-

ventional cumbersome SiO2 etching method for the fabrication of
rice husk-derived porous carbon, the present approach is more
facile, novel and effective for large scale production.
The mass ratio of PTFE and C–SiO2 composite has great influ-
ence on the SiO2 residue in the final sample. TG test was used to
investigate the amount of SiO2 in the obtained porous carbon. Fig.
S5 shows the various TG curves of porous carbon prepared with
different ratio of C–SiO2 composite vs. PTFE. It can be seen that
there would retain 18% SiO2 in the final samples when the ratio
of C–SiO2 composite vs. PTFE was 1:2. Undoubtly, when the ratio
of C–SiO2 composite vs. PTFE was increased, the SiO2 residue was
gradually decreased. The SiO2 could be clearly removed and with-
out any residual when the ratio of C–SiO2 composite vs. PTFE was
up to 1:10. Thus, in order to fully remove the SiO2 , the ratio of
C–SiO2 composite to PTFE is fixed at 1: 10 in this work.
To evaluate the potential application of the prepared porous
carbon materials for supercapacitor, cyclic voltammogram (CV)
measurements were first carried out in three electrode configua- Fig. 6. Specfic capacitances of CRHC and PRHC electrode as functions of various
tions in 6 M KOH solution over potential window of −1 to 0 V. scan rates.
Fig. 5 shows the CV curves of PRHC and CRHC electrodes at a
scan rate of 10 mV/s. Both of the CV curves demonstrate quasi-
rectangular shapes with slightly distorted at high potential, indi- cific capacitance for PRHC is attributed to its higher specific surface
cating close to ideal capacitive behavior [27]. Obviously, the CV area, which can accommodate more electrolyte ions adsorption for
curve of PRHC electrode shows a larger current density than that double layer capacitance [37].
of CRHC electrode, suggesting PRHC electrode has a higher spe- Furthermore, to confirm the electrochemical behavior of the as-
cific capacitance. This may be attributed to the significantly larger fabricated electrodes, galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) mea-
specific surface of PRHC for accommodation of larger amounts of surements were also carried out at different current densities.
EDLCs [35]. What’s more, for PRHC electrode, the rectangle-like Fig. 7a and Fig. S7 show the GCD curves of PRHC and CRHC elec-
shapes of the CVs (Fig. 5b) are still well retained even at a high trodes, respectively. It is clearly seen that all the curves show
scan rate of 100 mV/s, which indicated the ideal double layer ca- a similar symmetrical triangular shapes without apparent voltage
pacitive behavior, low contact resistance and better rate capability drop at the beginning of the discharge process, suggesting high
of the electrode [36]. CRHC electrode also demonstrates rectangle- coulombic efficiency and relatively small internal resisitance [38].
like even at high scanning rate (Fig. S6), but the current density The dischage curves of PRHC elelctrode illustrate longer charge–
is lower than that of PRHC electrode, which revealing that the discharge duration than those of CRHC electrode, which indicate
excellent rate performance but poor specific capacitance of CRHC that the PRHC electrode exhibits higher specific capacitance than
electrode. The specific capacitance of the electrode at various scan CRHC electrode.
rates were calculated basing on the CV curves accorded to the fol- Rate performance is a crucial criterion for evaluating the prac-
lowing equation: tical application of RHC electrode materials. The specific capaci-
tances calculated from discharge curves as a function of various
C = ∫ IdV/mυ V (2)
current densities of PRHC and CRHC electrode are shown in Fig. 7b.
where I (A) is the current, V (V) is the potential window, υ The specific capacitances of PRHC electrode are 220, 213, 209, 201
(mV/s) is the scan rate, and m (g) is the mass the active mate- and 192 F/g, while those of CRHC electrode are 70, 67, 64, 59 and
rial. The specific capacitance calculated from the CV curves is sum- 54 F/g at current densities of 0.5, 1, 2, 5 and 10 A/g, respectively.
marized in Fig. 6. The highest specific capacitances for PRHC and In addition, the specific capacitance of PHRC electrode can be still
CRHC are 227 and 82 F/g at 10 mV/s, respectively. The higher spe- retained 87.3% at a high current desnity of 10 A/g. This results

Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
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a b

Fig. 7. (a) Galvanostaticcharge–discharge curves of PRHC at various current densities. (b) Specfic capacitances of CRHC and PRHC electrode as functions of various current
densities.

a b

Fig. 8. (a) Cyclic stability of CRHC and PRHC. (b) Galvanostatic charge–discharge curves of PRHC electrode at 1st and 10,0 0 0th cycles.

suggest that the porous structure is suited for the fast ions dif-
fusion of PRHC electrode under high current density. The large
amount of micropores provides abundant surface areas to gener-
ate electric double layers. Furthermore, from the above SEM im-
age observation, there are many macropores in the PRHC. The
opened macroporous structure can lessen the electrolyte ions dif-
fusion pathway to the active sites, and hence benefit for improv-
ing the rate capability [39]. More importantly, from a comprehen-
sive comparison of the PRHC electrode vs. recently published rice
husk-derived porous carbon materials, the PRHC electrode obvi-
ously exhibits comparable and/or even higher specific capacitance
than those listed in Table S1. However, most of them were pre-
pared using activating agent to increase the specific surface area.
It should be strengthen that our prepartion process does not use
any activating agent.
The cycling stability is also a critical parameter for the practical
supercapacitor applications. The cycling stability of RHC electrode
was performed at a current density of 2 A/g. As shown in Fig. 8a,
the specific capacitance of PRHC decreased slowly, and about 98%
of the initial specific capacitance is retained after 10,0 0 0 cycles.
Fig. 9. Nyquist plots of the CRHC anf PRHC electrodes. The inset shows locally en-
This demonstrates that the PRHC has a relatively excellent long- larged Nyquist plosts in the high frequency region.
term stability. Fig. 8b shows the charge–discharge curves of the
first cycle and the 10,0 0 0th cycle. Notably, no obvious change can
be found, further confirming the outstanding cycling stability of Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is an effective
the electrode. method to obtain the kinetic performance information of the elec-

Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
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Schematic. 1. Illustration of the preparation process of PRHC.
trodes. Fig. 9 shows the corresponding Nyquist plots of CRHC and
PRHC electrode. Both of plots are composed of a semicircle in the
high frequency region, relating to the charge transfer resistance
at the interface, and an inclined line in the low frequency region,
corresponding to the electrolyte ions diffusion resistance [40]. The
smaller the semicircle, the lower is the charge transfer resistance,
and the steeper the inclined line, the lower is the electrolyte ions
diffusion resistance [41]. Compared to the CRHC electrode, the
semicircle of PRHC electrode is smaller and its inclined line is
also steeper, confirming the contribution of the higher electro-
chemical double layer behavior of the PRHC electrode (suggesting
better ideal capacitive behavior). Such performance metrics can
be attributed to the high surface area and porous structure of
PRHC, exhibiting a synergistic effect of facilitating efficient charge
transfer process and enhanced electric double-layer formation
[33]. These results indicate that the PRHC electrode is suitable as
the electrode material for a high-performance supercapacitor.
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, we proposed an expeditious method to syn-
thesize rice husk derived porous carbon by in situ SiO2 etching
strategy using PTFE as the etching agent. The resulting PRHC exhib-
ited a high surface area of 1550 m2 /g, and porous structure, which
favour the electrolyte ions transport and adsorption/desorption.
The obtained sample was evaluated as the electrode for superca-
pacitor, the PRHC showed a high specific capacitance of 220 F/g
at a current density of 0.5 A/g, an excellenet rate performance,
and a high cycling stability of only 2% loss in pecific capacitance
after 10,0 0 0 cycles at a current density of 2 A/g. The present
PTFE in situ SiO2 etching treatment process, however, unlike the
cumbersome HF or alkaline solution treatment, is well suited for
cosmically industrialization production and thus practical applica-
tions. Furthermore, we expect that this rice husk derived porous
carbon materials can be a good candidate for the electrode ma-
terials for supercapacitor considering its excellent electrochemical
performance and abundance.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Natural Science Fund of
Hubei Province (2017CFB155), Scientific Research Plan Project of
Hubei Education Department (B2017269), Scientific Research Ini-
tial funding for the Advanced Talent of Jianghan University (1009-
06810 0 01, 08010 0 01, 10 09-06750 0 01), Basic Research Project of
Wuhan City (2015011701011593), Hubei Province the Featured Su-
perior Disciplinary Group of Optoelectronic Chemical Materials and
Devices (10-43001013), 4th Yellow Crane Talent Project of Wuhan
Please cite this article as: J. Liang et al., In situ SiO2 etching strategy to prepare rice husk-derived porous carbons for supercapacitor
application, Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001
[m5G;October 23, 2017;14:2]
7
City and Hubei Province Innovative Young Research Team in Uni-
versities (T201318).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jtice.2017.10.001.
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