Bio-Waste-Derived Carbons for the Preparation of Solar Cells and Supercapacitors

Harnessing the intriguing properties of porous carbons derived from the naturally available bio-wastes holds a promising aspect for energy storage and conversion applications. With controlled pyrolysis, activation, and functionalization, such bio-waste-derived carbons (BDCs) show high electrical conductivity, tunable porosity, and porous surface area that make them promising candidates for both solar cells and supercapacitor applications. To reduce the reliance on commercially available activated carbon, these eco-friendly bio-wastes, constituting carbon-rich organic matter, could be a promising strategy to develop BDC-based electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitor applications. The charge storage activity was enriched due to hierarchical pore structures with heteroatoms doping that improved the ion transfer and energy density. Meanwhile, the use of BDCs as counter electrodes or photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cells resulted in good conductivity, photoelectricchemical stability, and electrocatalytic activity. Further, significant efforts have been devoted towards compounding heteroatom rich BDC-based materials with transition metals, carbides, and conducting polymers to ameliorate the overall power conversion efficiency of the solar cells. Therefore, the incorporation of BDCs in energy devices could lead to a promising pathway towards achieving environmentally sustainable energy solutions. However, challenges related to scalable and facile synthesis, optimizing carbonization and activation steps and stability of the BDC-based materials in real-time scales need to be further addressed. This chapter will give a comprehensive analysis of the BDC-based materials and their composites for sustainable and high-performance applications in supercapacitors and solar cells. It will highlight the current challenges and potential directions in this field of study, which will support the next phase of energy storage and conversion research.