The globally increasing energy demand that results from the rapid development of modern society has created intensive attention towards the importance of energy efficiency. The areas of energy storage and energy conversion have become one of the most important topics in scientific community at present. As new generation energy storage elements, supercapacitors have exhibited promising practical prospects in the information, transportation, electronics and other sectors due to their charge and discharge performance at high rate, high power density as well as long cycle life. Energy density, including gravimetric energy density, areal energy density and volumetric energy density, is one of the most critical indicator evaluating the performance of supercapacitors. The electrochemical performance of supercapacitors depends mainly on the electrochemical activities and kinetic properties of electrode materials. Carbonaceous materials are deemed to be highly promising, and therefore are extensively investigated energy storage materials for supercapacitors because of their environmental friendliness, low-cost production and outstanding chemical inertness during charging-discharging processes. The specific surface area has been long thought to be the main factor influencing the capacitance of carbonaceous materials. However, the pore structure is of similar importance. High specific surface areas are always arising from a high content of micropores. However, pore radii in the sub-nanometer range impede the ionic charge transfer ability significantly and thus cause a damping of capacitance. In this thesis, hierarchical porous carbons and their composite materials were fabricated by using polyacrylonitrile as carbon precursor for a tailored step-by-step pore forming method, including phase inversion, CaCO3 activation and KOH activation. The materials were thoroughly characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, BET, XPS and Raman spectroscopy to ascertain the chemical and structural features. The electrochemical properties were studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in detail to analyze the pore effect, which strongly influence their electrochemical properties. Porous carbons with high specific surface areas up to 2315 m2 g-1 and high pore volume of 1.9 cm3·g-1 were prepared. A step-wise pore forming method was employed to ensure a high specific surface area and high content of macro/mesopore at the same time. The relationship between pore structure, electrochemical capacitance and rate capability was investigated by changing the content of micropores. For a same specific surface area, a higher micropore content led to a lower capacitance and poorer rate capability. Based on these results, the capacitance was optimized to be 286.8 F g-1. The areal energy density of the supercapacitors can be improved by increasing the mass loading in a certain area directly. However, insufficient electrochemical reaction may be caused by a lack of unhindered electrical and ionic charge transfer routes, resulting in inefficient material utilization. This problem is addressed by designing hierarchical pore structures with embedded conductive additives. Thus, hierarchical porous carbons were modified by embedding carbon nanotubes (CNTs), followed by coverage with thin layers of birnessite. Owing to the hierarchical pore design and the very high pore volume, the birnessite coverage did not cause pore blocking. At the same time, an intimate contact between carbon and birnessite was established. A high area energy density of 627.8 μWh·cm-2 was obtained based on an optimized mass loading of 13.9 mg cm-2. The volumetric energy density of supercapacitors was determined by the density and porosity of active materials. Similarly, the dense active materials not always generate high specific capacitance because of an increased dead mass. However, too porous active materials do not provide sufficient volumetric capacitance due to a waste of space. Thus, density and porosity must be balanced by hierarchical pore structure design so that all pores are interconnected and can be accessed by ions. At the same time, the content of these pores should be as low as possible to save space. Based on the results, highly hierarchical porous carbons were synthesized and embedded into conductive carbon foam to combine electronic conductivity with ionic transfer. In that way, a volumetric energy density as high as 19.44 µWh cm-3 at a volumetric power density of 500 mW cm-3 was generated.

In der vorgelegten Arbeit werden sowohl effiziente als auch einfache Modifikationsansätze zur funktionalen Polymerumhüllung von Gibbsit-Plättchen präsentiert. Die plättchen-förmige Morphologie bleibt dabei nach der Polymerumhüllung erhalten. Im ersten Teil wird ein einfacher Ansatz zur Synthese von anisotropen, plättchen-förmigen Gibbsit-Polydopamin (G-PDA) Partikeln vorgestellt. Au NPs von kontrollierbarer Größe wurden auf der G-PDA Partikeloberfläche gebildet. Diese zeigten katalytische Aktivität zur Reduktion von 4-Nitrophenol und Rhodamin B (RhB) mittels Borhydrid. Die Partikel können durch ihre große, plättchen-förmige Kontaktfläche und der stark adhäsiven Eigenschaften der PDA Hülle einfach mittels Spin-Coating auf Siliziumsubstrate aufgebracht werden. Der so präparierte Nanokatalysator kann nun einfach wiederaufbereitet werden und zeigt hervorragende Wiederverwendbarkeit. Im zweiten Teil wurden anisotrope, hybride Kern-Schale Mikrogele mit wohldefinierter Struktur synthetisiert. Dabei bilden die Gibbsit Nanoplättchen den Kern und vernetztes, thermosensitives Poly(N-isopropylacylamid) die Hülle. Depolarisierte dynamische Lichtstreuung zeigte, dass die hybriden Mikrogele im kollabierten Zustand durch die plättchen-förmigen Kerne eine anisotrope Form annehmen. Der dritte Teil der Arbeit befasst sich mit der Herstellung von hochdispergierbaren, mesoporösen und stickstoffhaltighohle Kohlenstoff-Nanoplättchen. Diese neuartige Kohlenstoff-Nanostruktur wurde mittels sogenannter Silika-Nanocasting Technik unter Veswendung von hexagonalen Gibbsit-Templat und Dopamin als Kohlenstoffquelle synthetisiert. Solche hohlen Kohlenstoff-Nanostrukturen weisen exzellente, kolloidale Stabilität in wässrigen Medien vor und können direkt als Elektrodenmaterial für Superkondensatoren verwendet werden. Außerdem können sie in polyionischen Flüssigkeiten hohe Kapazitäten erzielen, wobei gleichzeitig eine hervorragende elektrochemische Stabilität gewährleistet wird. / In the present thesis, efficient and simple modification approaches have been developed to coat gibbsite platelets with a controllable thickness of functional polymer shell, which preserves the plate-like morphology after the polymer coating. In the first part, a facile approach has been presented for the synthesis of anisotropic plate-like gibbsite-polydopamine (G-PDA) particles. Au NPs with tunable size have been formed on the G-PDA particle surface, which show efficient catalytic activity for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol and Rodamine B (RhB) in the presence of borohydride. Such nanocatalysts can be easily deposited on silicon substrate by spin coating due to the large contact area of the plate-like G-PDA particles and the strong adhesive behavior of the PDA layer. The substrate-deposited nanocatalyst can be easily recycled, which shows excellent reusability. Secondly, anisotropic hybrid core-shell microgels with well-defined structures have been synthesized using gibbsite nanoplate as core and crosslinked thermosensitive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) as shell. The analysis by depolarized dynamic light scattering shows that the hybrid microgels have an anisotropic shape in the collapsed state, caused by the anisotropy of the plate-like core. In the third part, highly dispersible mesoporous nitrogen-doped hollow carbon nanoplates have been synthesized as a new carbon nanostructure via silica nanocasting technique using dopamine as carbon precursor and hexagonal-shaped gibbsite as template. Such hollow carbon nanoplates show excellent colloidal stability in aqueous media and can be directly applied as electrode materials in supercapacitors, which offer high capacitance and excellent electrochemical stability when using poly(ionic liquid) nanoparticles as binder.