Carbon xerogel and manganese oxide capacitive materials for advanced supercapacitors

Symmetric supercapacitors (SSC) and asymmetric supercapacitors (ASC) that use carbon xerogels with different porous textures as negative electrode and manganese oxide as positive electrode were investigated. The electrochemical performance of symmetric supercapacitors with carbon xerogel electrodes was mainly influenced by the textural characteristics of the carbon, pore size distribution being the property that has the strongest influence on the capacitance performance. The asymmetric supercapacitor showed an excellent capacitance performance (i.e. 213 F g(-1)) when a chemical activated carbon xerogel with a high SBET (i.e. 2360 m(2) g(-1)) was used as negative electrode and high performing oxide-based manganese as positive electrode, thereby demonstrating that carbon xerogels and manganese oxide have potential applications in supercapacitor devices.