Supercapacitor electrodes heavily loaded with active material suffer from low areal capacitances because close-packed, thick films are often obtained with high mass loading. In this work, nanostructured, mesoporous Co3O4 was directly deposited on a free-standing carbon substrate and evaluated as a supercapacitor electrode. The mesoporous structure combined with a conductive carbon network maximizes the utilization of active material, resulting in a high areal capacitance in spite of the high Co3O4 loading. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.