Confined-Space Pyrolysis of Polystyrene/Polyacrylonitrile for Nitrogen-Doped Hollow Mesoporous Carbon Spheres with High Supercapacitor Performance

Abstract

Nitrogen-doped hollow mesoporous carbon spheres have drawn much attention in many applications, including adsorption, catalysis and energy storage, etc. because of their hollow structure, thin carbon shell, and high specific surface area. Herein, a confined-space pyrolysis method is applied for the preparation of nitrogen-doped hollow mesoporous carbon sphere with uniform spherical morphology, relative large cavity, and high specific surface area, using polystyrene/polyacrylonitrile (PS/PAN, or PSPAN) spheres as a carbon precursor. In this process, mesoporous silica shell is coated on the PSPAN spheres to provide a confined space, in which a regular spherical morphology of nitrogen-doped hollow mesoporous carbon sphere can be obtained after the process of pyrolysis. The in situ generation of CO2 and H2O from PSPAN spheres play the role of active agent, creating a rich and uniform mesoporous distribution for nitrogen-doped hollow mesoporous carbon spheres, which is conducive to fast charge transport. Rich nitrogen content in PAN results in in situ nitrogen doping. Adjusting the PS:PAN ratio can realize the adjustment of diameter and cavity size. As an electrode in a supercapacitor, the nitrogen-doped hollow mesoporous carbon sphere exhibits outstanding performance with large specific capacitance, indicating its excellent promise in energy storage.

Customized Structure Design and Functional Mechanism Analysis of Carbon Spheres for Advanced Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

“…[127] However, the PS sphere is completely decomposed only as a self-sacrifice template in the above method. [128] PS spheres can also been used as carbon sources by the Friedel-Crafts reaction or "dissolution-capture" method. After being treated with organic solvents such as tetrahydrofuran, [129] dimethylformamide, [130] and chloroform, [131] the dissolved PS are trapped into the meso-channel in silica shell.…”

Mesoporous Carbon Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion

“…The so-called hard template in this synthesis strategy plays a similar role as molds in metal casting. Silica, [46][47][48][49][50][51] polymer beads, [52][53][54][55][56] metal oxide [57][58][59][60] and zeolite [61][62][63] are the most widely used templates. A typical hard template assisting synthesis process usually involves the following steps: as presented in Figure 2a, mesoporous solid phases or colloidal crystals are first prepared as sacrificial molds.…”

DSPE-PEG-Coated Uniform Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Capsules for NIR-Mediated Synergistic Chemophototherapy of Skin Cancer

“…Compared to the latter, in situ nitrogen doping is simpler and yields a high amount of N-doped carbon spheres with uniform distribution of elemental N throughout the carbon lattice . N-doped carbon-based nanomaterials with superlative properties such as controllable geometry, regular porosity, tunable size, large surface area, and active sites for heterogeneous reactions play a pivotal role in determining their performance in many applications. − However, there are few reports where the status and influence of the incorporated nitrogen on physicochemical properties have been extensively studied . It has been observed that precursors and synthesis conditions play an important role in determining the optical property of carbon nanomaterials .…”