Abstract
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•First report on surface activated commercial carbon fiber cloth for symmetric supercapacitors.•The treated carbon cloth electrode (CC-F1) possesses 42.2 F g−1 at 1 mA cm−2.•The CC-F1 devices exhibit good cycling stability and rate capability.•High specific energy 4.64 W h kg−1 is attributed to the effect of two-step surface treatment.
Commercial carbon fiber (T300) cloth as the original material is surface-treated by a two-step approach, lastly becoming a high-performance electrode. This kind of electrode has a high specific capacitance (42.2 F g−1), which is nearly a hundred times that of the original carbon cloth. After fabricating these electrodes into a symmetric supercapacitor device, it provides a high specific energy of 4.64 W h kg−1 at a specific power of 10 W kg−1. Furthermore, the device showed long cycling stability (it keeps 92% capacitance retention after 1000 cycles), good rate capability, and low internal resistance. This work is expected to provide guidance for the research of structural supercapacitors based on commercial carbon cloth.