A novel separator material derived from discarded disposable medical mask waste for supercapacitor applications

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak occurring approximately 2019-2022 required everyone to wear a mask to reduce the number of transmissions of this virus; thus, the use of disposable medical masks has increased very sharply. As a result, the use of disposable medical masks produces a large amount of mask waste, which leads to negative effects on biosafety and the environment. To address this problem, in this work, for the first time, disposable medical mask waste was used as a separator material in supercapacitor devices. The aim of this work was to utilize discarded medical mask waste as a separator material in supercapacitor devices, and its performance was compared with that of eggshell membrane-based separators. The morphological structure of the separator materials revealed similar morphologies based on the SEM image. The electrochemical performance results showed large specific capacitances of 254 F g-1, 299 F g-1, and 205 F g-1 for YCCFs-MW1, YCCFs-MW2, and YCCFs-MW3, respectively. This work showed that disposable medical mask waste has huge potential for use as a separator in supercapacitor devices based on its electrochemical performance.