Bougainvillea derived porous carbons and their performance in magnetic field as supercapacitor electrodes

Abstract

With the increase in demand of electrical energy storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors, considerable effort is being put to increase the efficiency and applications of current technology while keeping it sustainable. Keeping this in mind we have persued the preparation and charatization of waste biomass derived carbon powders as supercapacitor/battery electrodes. Additionally, we have evaluated the performance of such carbons in the presence of an external magnetic field as we expect the graphene like structures to possess intrinsic magnetic nature. Here, we report the valorization of bougainvillea flower petals and detritus into graphenic carbon and explore a novel electrical double layer supercapacitor device that uses Zn+2 ions for internal charge transport and is able to show increased performance upon application of an external magnetic field.