Biomass-based controllable morphology of carbon microspheres with multi-layer hollow structure for superior performance in supercapacitors.

[Display omitted] • Hydrothermal and sol-gel method were combined to prepare carbon microspheres. • Carbon microspheres with multi-layer dendritic hollow structure, high specific surface area and abundant micropores were successfully prepared. • Excellent cycle stability and great specific capacitance were obtained by the supercapacitor prepared from the carbon microspheres. The electrochemical properties of corn starch (CS)-based hydrothermal carbon microsphere (CMS) electrode materials for supercapacitor are closely related to their structures. Herein, cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) was used as a soft template to form the corn starch (CS)-based carbon microspheres with radial hollow structure in the inner and middle layers by hydrothermal and sol-gel method. Due to the introduction of multi-layer hollow structure of carbon microsphere, more micropores were produced during CO 2 activation, which increased the specific surface area and improved the capacitance performance. Compared to commercial activated carbon, the four different morphologies of corn starch CMS had better electrochemical performances. Consequently, the proposed CO 2 –(CTAB)-CS-CS exhibits a high discharge specific capacitance of 242.5F/g at 1 A/g in three-electrode system with 6 M KOH electrolyte, better than commercial activated carbon with 208.5F/g. Moreover, excellent stability is achieved for CO 2 –(CTAB)-CS-CS with approximately 97.14 % retention of the initial specific capacitance value after 10,000 cycles at a current density of 2 A/g, while the commercial activated carbon has 86.96 % retention. This implies that the corn starch-based multilayer hollow CMS could be a promising electrode material for high-performance supercapacitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]