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Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres as electrode material for supercapacitors

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Abstract

Recently, the rapid development of graphene industry in the world, especially in China, provides more opportunities for the further extension of the application field of graphene-based materials. Graphene has also been considered as a promising candidate for use in supercapacitors. Here, nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres (NGHS) have been successfully synthesized by using industrialized and pre-processed graphene oxide (GO) as raw material, SiO2 spheres as hard templates, and urea as reducing-doping agents. The results demonstrate that the content and pretreatment of GO sheets have important effect on the uniform spherical morphologies of the obtained samples. Industrialized GO and low-cost urea are used to prepare graphene hollow spheres, which can be a promising route to achieve mass production of NGHS. The obtained NGHS have a cavity of about 270 nm, specific surface area of 402.9 m2 g−1, ultrathin porous shells of 2.8 nm, and nitrogen content of 6.9 at.%. As electrode material for supercapacitors, the NGHS exhibit a specific capacitance of 159 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 in 6 M KOH aqueous electrolyte. Moreover, the NGHS exhibit superior cycling stability with 99.24% capacitive retention after 5000 charge/discharge cycles at a current density of 5 A g−1.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21676070), Hebei Natural Science Foundation (B2015208109), Hebei Training Program for Talent Project (A201500117), Five Platform Open Fund Projects of Hebei University of Science and Technology (2015PT37), Hebei One Hundred-Excellent Innovative Talent Program(III) (SLRC2017034), Hebei Science and Technology Project (17214304D, 16214510D).

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  1. College of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, 050018, China

    Kechan Xia, Guoxu Wang, Hongliang Zhang, Yifeng Yu, Lei Liu & Aibing Chen

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  1. Kechan Xia
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  2. Guoxu Wang
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  3. Hongliang Zhang
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Correspondence to Aibing Chen.

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Xia, K., Wang, G., Zhang, H. et al. Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen-doped graphene hollow spheres as electrode material for supercapacitors. J Nanopart Res 19, 254 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-017-3954-z

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