Highly Crystalline Mesoporous C₆₀ with Ordered Pores: A Class of Nanomaterials for Energy Applications

Abstract

Highly ordered mesoporous C with a well-ordered porous structure and a high crystallinity is prepared through the nanohard templating method using a saturated solution of C in 1-chloronaphthalene (51 mg mL ) as a C precursor and SBA-15 as a hard template. The high solubility of C in 1-chloronaphthalene helps not only to encapsulate a huge amount of the C into the mesopores of the template but also supports the oligomerization of C and the formation of crystalline walls made of C . The obtained mesoporous C exhibits a rod-shaped morphology, a high specific surface area (680 m g ), tuneable pores, and a highly crystalline wall structure. This exciting ordered mesoporous C offers high supercapacitive performance and a high selectivity to H O production and methanol tolerance for ORR. This simple strategy could be adopted to make a series of mesoporous fullerenes with different structures and carbon atoms as a new class of energy materials.

Porous Carbons: Structure‐Oriented Design and Versatile Applications

“…The ordered mesoporous structures have been well formed by using hard templates like hexagonally ordered mesoporous silica (SBA‐15), [ 147 ] soft templates (e.g., Pluronic F127, P123), [ 159 ] or a combination of them.…”

“…As exhibited in Figure a, SBA‐15 served as the inorganic template, and 1‐chloronaphthalene acted as the solvent to dissolve C 60 , making it easier to fill in SBA‐15. [ 147 ] Impressively, this solvent promoted the formation of crystalline fullerene framework by crosslinking C 60 for polymerization. After carbonization and etching the silica template, a well‐ordered, and rod‐shaped mesoporous structure with crystalline C 60 walls (Figure 7b,c) was obtained for ORR and supercapacitor applications.…”

“…Reproduced with permission. [ 147 ] Copyright 2018 Wiley‐VCH. d) Schematic illustration of synthesizing mesoporous carbon by the mechanochemical assembled soft‐templating method and TEM images of e) OMC@F127 0.4 ‐800, f) OMC@F127 0.8 ‐800, and g) P123‐templated carbon.…”

Ordered Mesoporous C70 with Highly Crystalline Pore Walls for Energy Applications

“…Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image shows that MFC 70 ‐150 has uniform rod‐shaped morphology with the width of 1–1.2 µm and a length of 3–3.5 µm ( Figure A,B). The highly uniform particles are originated from the template which was synthesized in a static medium wherein the precipitation combined with the absence of the free‐movement help the formation of uniform rod‐shaped particles (Figure S6, Supporting Information). HRTEM results are in consistent with the data obtained from XRD, displaying ordered mesoporous that are arranged in equal intervals and tunable unit cell constant (Figure C,D and Figure S7, Supporting Information).…”

“…Cross‐linking of the fullerenes is not only the key to preserve the porous structure after the removal of the template but also offers improved properties such as high specific surface area and a high conductivity. Very recently, we have reported on the creation of well‐ordered porosity in the fullerene C 60 nanostructures via nanotemplating method and demonstrated their performance in energy applications . Although it was exciting to realize the highly ordered mesoporous fullerene C 60 (MFC 60 ) with a high specific surface area, the resulting structures possess polycrystallinity due to the insufficient cross‐linkage between the C 60 molecules because of the limited solubility of C 60 in 1‐chloronanphthalene which was used as a solvent.…”