To meet the increased performance and cost requirements of commercial supercapacitor, a N and O self-doped hierarchical porous carbon is fabricated via a green and simple self-activation route utilizing leaves of wild hollyhock as raw materials. Comparing to commercial activated carbon, the reported material exhibits some marked merits, such as simple and green fabrication process, low cost, and superior capacitance performance. The specific surface area of the obtained N and O codoped hierarchical porous carbon arrives 954 m2 g−1, and the content of the self-doped nitrogen and oxygen reaches 2.64 at.% and 7.38 at.%, respectively. The specific capacitance of the obtained material reaches 226 F g− 1 while the specific capacitance of the symmetric supercapacitor arrives 47.3 F g− 1. Meanwhile, more than 90.3% of initial specific capacitance is kept under a current density of 20 A g− 1, and no arresting degradation is observed for capacitance after 5000 times cycle, perfectly demonstrating the excellent cycle and rate capability of the obtained material. The obtained N and O co-doped hierarchical porous carbon are expected to be an ideal substitution for commercial activated carbon.

Energy and environmental are always two major challenges for the sustainable development of the modern human being. For avoiding the serious environmental pollution caused in the fabrication process of porous carbon, a popular energy storage material, we reported a facile, green and activating agent free route hereby directly carbonizing a special biomass, Glebionis coronaria. A nitrogen doped hierarchical porous carbon with a specific surface area of up to 1007 m2 g−1 and a N doping content of up to 2.65 at.% was facilely fabricated by employing the above route. Benefiting from the peculiarly hierarchical porous morphology, enhanced wettability and improved conductivity, the obtained material exhibits superior capacitance performance, which capacitance reaches up to 205 F g−1 under two-electrode configuration, and no capacitance loss is observed after 5000 cycles. Meanwhile, the capacitance retention of the obtained material arrives up to 95.0% even under a high current density of 20 A g−1, illuminating its excellent rate capability. The fabricated nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon with larger capacitance than commercial activated carbon, excellent rate capability and cycle stability is an ideal cost-efficient substitution of commercial activated carbon for supercapacitor application.