Hollow Carbon Nanoparticles of Tunable Size and Wall Thickness by Hydrothermal Treatment of α-Cyclodextrin Templated by F127 Block Copolymers

Abstract

On the basis of the strategy of forming supermolecular structure between αcyclodextrin and poly(ethylene oxide), a facile synthesis process has been successfully developed for producing hollow carbon nanoparticles of controllable size and morphology by hydrothermal treatment of α-cyclodextrin in the presence of Pluronic F127 as a soft template. The hollow carbon nanoparticles thus derived are demonstrated to exhibit excellent hydrophilic behavior. Their sizes and wall thicknesses can be tuned by adjusting the ratio of α-cyclodextrin to F127. After pyrolysis at 900 °C in argon gas, the hollow carbon nanoparticles exhibit a meso-/ microporous carbon wall with specific surface area of >400 m 2 /g and a high specific charge capacity of >450 mAh/g when employed as an anode in a lithium ion battery.

Anisotropic polydopamine capsules with an ellipsoidal shape that can tolerate harsh conditions: efficient adsorbents for organic dyes and precursors for ellipsoidal hollow carbon particles

“…0.82, indicating the graphitic nature of the N-doped carbon capsules. 31 These results are consistent with previous works that also use polydopamine as the carbon precursor. 30,31,33,34 3.5 Rigid ellipsoidal PDA capsules as effective absorbents for dyes in contaminated water…”

“…29 In addition, calcinations at very high temperature more than 800 C and the dried state is a common way to turn organic carbon precursors into carbon materials. [30][31][32][33][34] It is highly challenging, if not impossible, to directly burn polymeric capsules into carbon capsules without losing their original morphology. 26 In the case of non-spherical capsules, to keep the shape intact under afore-mentioned harsh conditions is even more elusive since the whole surface does not experience the same stress or strain due to the different surface curvatures.…”

“…4,6,7,9,10,12,22,37,38 Especially, although PDA have emerged as a very attractive precursor for nitrogen-doped carbon materials, preparation of hollow carbon particles or carbon capsules by carbonization of PDA involves multiple steps including PDA coating of hard templates, carbonization and template removing. 30,31,33,34 Carbonization of PDA coated templates might lead to the contamination of the carbon materials by the underlying templating materials, which can be avoid by direct carbonization of pure PDA capsules into carbon capsules. However, such strategy has barely been exploited since PDA capsules might not survive the high temperature (>800 C) of carbonization.…”

Arylsulfonic acid functionalized hollow mesoporous carbon spheres for efficient conversion of levulinic acid or furfuryl alcohol to ethyl levulinate

“…Raman scattering spectra agree well with the XRD result, and the scattering peaks found at 1334 (D band, corresponding to disordered sp 2 hybridized carbon network) and 1595 cm −1 (G band, corresponding to ordered sp 2 hybridized carbon network) are the characteristics of the carbonized materials with polycyclic aromatic carbon sheets [37,38]. From Raman scattering spectra it is also observed that the intensity ratio of D band to G band (I D :I G ) significantly increases after functionalization of HMCSs with ArSO 3 H groups; moreover, the ratio (0.51, 0.65 and 0.76 for HMCSs, ArSO 3 HHMCSs1.8-1 and ArSO 3 H-HMCSs3.2-1) continuously increases with ArSO 3 H loading.…”

One-step synthesis of hollow carbon nanospheres in non-coordinating solvent

“…The solvothermal reaction of bovine serum albumin in water and ethanol could produce hollow carbon nanospheres [12]. Also carbonization of self-assembled cyclodextrin with Pluronic F127 in water produced homogeneous hollow carbon nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 200 to 400 nm [13]. In this contribution, we report a novel simple approach to highly uniform hollow carbon nanospheres using carbohydrate as the carbon source in non-coordinating solvent.…”