Controlled Synthesis of Carbon Nanospheres via the Modulation of the Hydrophilic Length of the Assembled Surfactant Micelles

Abstract

A co-polymerization-carbonization method was employed to synthesize porous carbon nanospheres (PCNSs) using pyrrole-aniline polymers as a carbon source and alkyl phenol non-ionic surfactants as templates. The effect of the hydrophilic length on the carbon nanosphere size was systematically investigated. The so-prepared PCNSs were characterized via high-magnification scanning electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis, and N adsorption and desorption analysis. The results indicate that the obtained nanosphere diameter can be tuned by changing the length of the hydrophilic groups. The length of the hydrophilic groups mainly affects the size of the vesicles or micelles formed by the assembly of the surfactant in solution, as was verified by the DLS results. After activation by KOH, the typical sample EO(30)-PCNS has a high specific surface area of 2137 m/g and a large pore volume of 1.76 cm/g. Electrochemical tests in 6 M KOH demonstrated that the assembled EO(30)-PCNS supercapacitor electrode displays good capacitive properties, such as a high specific capacitance of 221 F/g at 1.0 A/g and a good rate capacity of 68% retention at 10.0 A/g. This finding suggests that the uniform particle shape and high specific surface area are beneficial for the ion transportation, leading to good electrochemical performances. Our work provides a novel synthetic strategy for the fabrication of carbon nanospheres or other nanosphere materials for the construction of high-performance supercapacitors by optimizing few parameters, such as the length of the hydrophilic or hydrophobic groups of the surfactants.

Monodisperse Porous Carbon Nanospheres with Ultra‐High Surface Area for Energy Storage in Electrochemical Capacitors

“…The more favourable (wider) pore size distribution of this material favours the unrestrained sorption of the ionic liquid ions at fast rates, which allows taking full advantage of this high voltage electrolyte. The excellent values of capacitance and rate capability of the nanoparticles in the organic electrolytes were confirmed by cyclic voltammetry experiments (see Figure S10) and compared favourably with those of other recently reported materials for high power capacitive systems, including carbon nanoparticles, [20,55,56] microspheres, [29,57,58] and hierarchically porous carbons [59–62] (see Table S2). The cycling stability of the supercapacitors operating in the organic electrolytes was studied over 10000 cycles of charge‐discharge at a current density of 10 A g −1 .…”

Recent Advances in Organic Thermoelectric Materials: Principle Mechanisms and Emerging Carbon-Based Green Energy Materials

“…Carbon materials, such as graphene, CNT, nanodiamonds, carbon fiber, and fullerenes, have attracted great interest in recent years [93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107]. In the past decades, carbon materials, particularly CNT and graphene, have been widely employed in the fabrication of thermoelectric materials because of the following reasons: (1) carbon materials have an intrinsically high electrical conductivity, which can significantly enhance the thermoelectric efficiency of thermoelectric materials; (2) as novel carbon nanomaterials, their large specific surface areas can promote the formation of a highly efficient interface between the polymer matrix and the carbon particles [93,108,109,110,111,112,113,114]; (3) the high thermal conductivity of carbon materials can be alleviated by wrapping or coating the polymer matrix on their surfaces [115]; and (4) carbon-based thermoelectric polymer composites are flexible, low-cost, and non-toxic, in addition to having high mechanical strength and being light-weight.…”

A review of the recent trend in the synthesis of carbon nanomaterials derived from oil palm by-product materials

“…On the other hand, using a catalyst such as a ferrocene can help speed up the catalytic decomposition of the carbon precursor, rice husk, and the plasma-enhanced in forming CNTs, as demonstrated by M. Asnawi and colleagues [125]. A study forward by Liu and colleagues shows that the length of hydrophilic groups from polymer carbon precursor, pyrrole-aniline polymers, could tune the diameter of the carbon nanospheres, which can be applied in the usage of high-performance supercapacitors [126]. Since the report on "vapour-grown carbon fibre" by Endo et al (1995) [127], several techniques and scaled-up synthesis have been successfully established, such as high-temperature preparation methods, which include arc discharge and laser ablation.…”