GO/auricularia-derived hierarchical porous carbon used for capacitive deionization with high performance

The hierarchical porous carbon materials coupled with graphene nanosheets were prepared by simple carbonizing hybrid of auricularia and graphene oxide with the following KOH activation. It is found that the porous carbon materials prepared via hydrothermal carbonization process possess a preferable pore structure compared with that prepared via calcining carbonization process. As such, the resultant porous carbon exhibits a high surface area of 1401 m2 g−1 with a high proportion of mesoporosity (20.6%). More importantly, when used as electrode materials for capacitive deionization (CDI), such kind of porous carbon material shows a high electrosorption capacity of 7.74 mg g−1.