Advanced carbon electrodes pave the way for high-performance supercapacitors in wearable and sustainable energy systems
image: Schematic illustration summarizing the key factors, boosting strategies, and practical applications of advanced carbon electrodes for supercapacitors. The graphic highlights the influence of pore structure, surface chemistry, electrical conductivity, and nanoarchitecture on electrochemical performance, together with optimization approaches including heteroatom doping, hierarchical porous engineering, and nanostructure regulation. The resulting high-performance carbon electrodes enable emerging applications in wearable electronics, self-powered systems, and implantable devices.
Credit: © Lei Liu* et al. 2025. This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
A review published on March 18, 2025, in Volume 1 of the journal Smart Materials and Devices provides a comprehensive overview of advanced carbon electrodes for supercapacitors, with a particular focus on rational structural engineering and practical energy-storage applications. Led by Dr. Lei Liu, the research team examined key strategies for improving supercapacitor performance, including pore architecture optimization, surface functionalization, conductivity enhancement, and nanoscale structural design. The review also highlights the growing potential of carbon-based supercapacitors in wearable electronics, self-powered systems, and implantable devices.
“Despite rapid advances in carbon-based energy-storage materials, several critical challenges remain,” said Lei Liu. “We need to further bridge the gap between laboratory-scale material design and scalable, application-oriented supercapacitor technologies.”
The review emphasizes the importance of hierarchical pore engineering for rapid ion transport, the role of heteroatom doping and surface functionalization in enhancing capacitance and electrochemical stability, and the integration of conductive nanostructures to improve energy density and long-term cycling performance.
The researchers argue that addressing these challenges is essential for advancing next-generation energy-storage technologies and accelerating the practical deployment of high-performance supercapacitors in wearable electronics, portable devices, and sustainable energy systems.