Nickel treatment of biomass-derived nanocarbon for energy devices

Nanocarbon materials have an important role in future energy storage devices, but their production has a significant energy demand and contributes to pollution. This work introduces a new method to carbonise natural biomass into nanocarbon materials at low temperatures via a simple nickel treatment. The materials obtained are covered homogeneously with nickel nanoparticles, and show excellent electrochemical properties. A material which has a unique structure with micro- and macro-pores is obtained after removal of the nickel nanoparticles, leading to outstanding supercapacitor performance. In addition, we show that activation of the nickel particles converts the material into an effective catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction.