Nitrogen-doped activated carbons via melamine-assisted NaOH/KOH/urea aqueous system for high performance supercapacitors

Ultrafine C-doped ZnO/carbon nanocomposites with different photocatalytic activities have been prepared usingTEMPO-oxidized cellulose as a template but also as the source of carbon. The result is an enhancement of thephotocatalytic activity ascribed to different phenomena: a high mesoporosity beneficial to mass transport, a thincarbon layer onto ZnO increasing the charge transfer and hydrophobicity of ZnO, a narrowing of ZnO band gapand an increase of the zinc (VZn) and oxygen (Vo) vacancies effectively suppressing of the charge recombination.These are evidenced by photocatalytic test of photodegradation of methyl orange (MO) achieved to assess andcompared the different photocatalysts. The highest rate constant value of photodegradation of MO is0.0254 min−1, three times higher than that of ZnO prepared without templates (0.0087 min−).