Synthesis of Partially Graphitic Ordered Mesoporous Carbons with High Surface Areas

Abstract

Graphitic carbons with ordered mesostructure and high surface areas (of great interest in applications such as energy storage) have been synthesized by a direct triblock‐copolymer‐templating method. Pluronic F127 is used as a structure‐directing agent, with a low‐molecular‐weight phenolic resol as a carbon source, ferric oxide as a catalyst, and silica as an additive. Inorganic oxides can be completely eliminated from the carbon. Small‐angle XRD and N2 sorption analysis show that the resultant carbon materials possess an ordered 2D hexagonal mesostructure, uniform bimodal mesopores (about 1.5 and 6 nm), high surface area (∼1300 m2/g), and large pore volumes (∼1.50 cm3/g) after low‐temperature pyrolysis (900 °C). All surface areas come from mesopores. Wide‐angle XRD patterns demonstrate that the presence of the ferric oxide catalyst and the silica additive lead to a marked enhancement of graphitic ordering in the framework. Raman spectra provide evidence of the increased content of graphitic sp2 carbon structures. Transmission electron microscopy images confirm that numerous domains in the ordered mesostructures are composed of characteristic graphitic carbon nanostructures. The evolution of the graphitic structure is dependent on the temperature and the concentrations of the silica additive, and ferric oxide catalyst. Electrochemical measurements performed on this graphitic mesoporous carbon when used as an electrode material for an electrochemical double layer capacitor shows rectangular‐shaped cyclic voltammetry curves over a wide range of scan rates, even up to 200 mV/s, with a large capacitance of 155 F/g in KOH electrolyte. This method can be widely applied to the synthesis of graphitized carbon nanostructures.

Adsorption of benzene, cyclohexane and hexane on ordered mesoporous carbon

“…Then the OMC was synthesized via the EISA process with some minor modifications by our group (Gao et al, 2011). Typically, 1.6 g F127 was dissolved in 6.0 g ethanol at 313 K, then 5.0 g resol solution was added to form mixture A.…”

High rate performance activated carbons prepared from ginkgo shells for electrochemical supercapacitors

“…Wang et al reported a co-gelation route to synthesize porous graphitized carbons by using teraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as a template, metal nitrates as catalyst and furfuryl alcohol (FA) as precursor [19]. Gao et al synthesized graphitized carbons with an ordered mesoporous structure using ferric oxide as catalyst, which can even achieve a specific capacitance of 155 F g À1 at a scan rate of 200 mV s À1 [20]. Sevilla et al obtained graphitized porous carbons by catalytic graphitization of porous carbons with silica xerogel as a template and phenolic resin as carbon precursor.…”

Synthesis of metal-incorporated graphitic microporous carbon terminated with highly-ordered graphene walls—Controlling the number of graphene layers by ambient-temperature metal sputtering

“…Although the theoretical results seem to be exciting, not much experimental works have been done in this regard due to the lack of proper fabrication techniques to incorporate metal atoms within the graphene network to give required H 2 binding energy [4], and hence, deserve much attention. Also, the recent advancements in the fabrication of partially graphitic micro/mesoporous carbon has shown improved hydrogen uptake capacity due to the high surface area into the porous structure and favorable hydrogen binding energy in the local curvature of graphene sheets in the short-range graphitic structures [1,3,13]. Therefore a metal-incorporated partially graphitic porous carbon network containing few-layer graphene may potentially improve the hydrogen storage capacity to achieve the elusive DOE goal.…”