Controllable synthesis of bowl-shaped porous carbon materials through didodecyldimethylammonium bromide for high performance supercapacitors

A series of bowl-shaped porous carbon materials was successfully synthesized by the use of didodecyldimethylammonium bromide as the soft template agent. By controlling the dosage of the soft template agent and the water/ethanol ratio of the solvent, the size and structure of the carbon materials can be precisely controlled. The prepared carbon materials with stacked bowl structure have good specific surface area (1,380.20 m(2) g(-1)), large pore volume (1.27 cm(3) g(-1)) and high heteroatom N doping amount (6.68 at.%). Moreover, electrochemical tests in 6 M KOH demonstrated impressive electrochemical performance, where the specific capacity of the typical materials was measured to be 191.0 F g(-1) (at the current density of 1 A g(-1)), and the capacity retention rate of typical materials was 80% (at the current density of 10 A g(-1)).