Additive-Driven Self-Assembly of Well Ordered Mesoporous Carbon/Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Composites for Supercapacitors

Supercapacitors have attracted significant attention as energy storage devices for applications to meet the requirements of fast charge and discharge, high power density, and long cycle life. Recent research efforts demonstrate that the metal oxide- mesoporous carbon nanocomposite materials are indeed a class of promising electrode materials for high performance supercapacitors. However several major drawbacks for metal oxide-carbon nanocomposite materials remain, such as relatively low loadings of the metal oxide, aggregation of nanoparticles, and the lack of an ordered mesoporous structure. Here we demonstrate that well ordered mesoporous carbon/iron oxide composites can be prepared through simple carbonization of blends of block copolymers serving as the source of carbon and a porogen, e.g., poly(t-butyl acrylate)-block-polyacrylonitrile (PtBA-b-PAN), and iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs). Strong interactions between phenol-functionalized iron oxide NPs and polyacrylonitrile result in a preferential dispersion of the nanoparticles within the PAN domains and leads to ordered nanostructured mesoporous carbon framework containing upto 30 wt% iron oxide nanoparticles after pyrolysis. The specific capacitance of composites with 30 wt.% Fe2O3 NPs reaches 235 F/g.