Prof. Jung Kyu Kim (School of Chemical Engineering, SKKU) and Prof. Uk Sim (NEEL Inc. & KENTECH) reported his collaboration research achievements with Prof. Chang Hyuck Choi (Department of Chemistry, POSTECH) and Dr. Heechae Choi (University of Cologne, Germany): development of an environmental friendly biochar electrocatalyst from Camellia japonica flowers for sustainable green hydrogen production and supercapacitor.

The versatile use of sulfur self-doped biochar derived from Camellia japonica (camellia) flowers is demonstrated as a multifunctional catalyst for overall water splitting and a supercapacitor. The native sulfur content in the camellia flower facilitates in situ self-doping of sulfur, which highly activates the camellia-driven biochar (SA-Came) as a multifunctional catalyst with the enhanced electron-transfer ability and long-term durability. For water splitting, an SA-Came-based electrode is highly stable and shows reaction activities in both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions, with overpotentials of 154 and 362 mV at 10 mA cm−2, respectively. For supercapacitors, SA-Came achieves a specific capacitance of 125.42 F g−1 at 2 A g−1 and high cyclic stability in a three-electrode system in a 1 M KOH electrolyte. It demonstrated a high energy density of 34.54 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 1600 W kg−1 as a symmetric hybrid supercapacitor device with a wide working potential range of 0–1.6 V.

This research achievement was selected as the cover art of the journal ‘Carbon Energy’ (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cey2.207)

*A sulfur self-doped multifunctional biochar catalyst for overall water splitting and a supercapacitor from Camellia japonica flowers (Journal: Carbon Energy, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cey2.207) 

A development of an environmental friendly biochar electrocatalyst from

 Camellia japonica flowers for sustainable green hydrogen production and supercapacitor

The cover art of the journal ‘Carbon Energy’