Preparation of Boron/Sulfur-Codoped Porous Carbon Derived from Biological Wastes and Its Application in a Supercapacitor.

Abundant biomass resources are a good choice for preparing electrode materials for supercapacitors, but developing a versatile and simple synthetic method to convert them into electrode materials remains a challenge. In the present research, our team reports a promising strategy and cost-efficient method to fabricate boron/sulfur-codoped porous carbon from biomass sources, mainly utilizing four biomass materials. Detailed material characterization showed that the samples produced by this approach possess rich B and S doping. Additionally, the original biomass materials treated by activation produce abundant pores. Therefore, owing to the synergetic effect of abundant atomic doping and microporous/mesoporous distribution, the obtained carbon as electrode material manifested excellent specific capacitances of 290 F g-1 at a 0.5 A g-1 current density. Moreover, the specific energy of the prepared samples of the as-assembled symmetric supercapacitor is as high as 16.65 Wh kg-1 in 1 M Na2SO4, with a brilliant cyclical performance of only a 2.91% capacitance decay over 10,000 cycles. In addition, it has been verified universally that three other types of bio-wastes can also prepare electrode material using this method. This paper represents a significant attempt to turn waste biomass into treasure while also providing ideas for the design and preparation of supercapacitor electrode materials.

Preparation and Self-Cleaning Performance of Carbon-Based Superhydrophobic Coatings Based on Non-Fluorine and Non-Toxic Corn Straw.

Recently, superhydrophobic surfaces with self-cleaning ability have attracted broad research interest due to their huge potential in daily lives and industrial applications, but the use of fluorinate, toxic organic compounds, and expensive feedstocks make superhydrophobic materials a great challenge in practical application. In this study, we present a facile dip-coating strategy to prepare superhydrophobic coatings with self-cleaning properties based on a non-fluorine and non-toxic system by using eco-friendly corn straw as raw material. During this process, aromatic carbon particles with rough hierarchical structures were prepared firstly via a simple fast pyrolysis process, followed by modification with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in absolute ethanol solvent to decrease the surface free energy. Research shows these natural straw-derived carbons display a microstructure of several protrusions which is similar to the lotus leave's and the resulted coatings exhibit an outstanding superhydrophobic property with a static water contact angle (WCA) of 151.67 ± 1.36 degrees. In addition, the as-prepared coatings possessed excellent self-cleaning performance: no contaminations were observed on the surfaces after examining with sludge, calcimine, water, and common liquids such as tea, milk, soybean milk as well as ink, which have a broad range of potential application in the field of antifouling, waterproofing, and anticorrosive.