Templated Synthesis of Carbon Materials from Zeolites (Y, Beta, and ZSM-5) and a Montmorillonite Clay (K10):  Physical and Electrochemical Characterization

Abstract

New high surface area carbon materials were prepared at low temperature (600 °C) using zeolite (Y, Beta, and ZSM-5) and montmorillonite clay (K10) templates. Acrylonitrile, furfuryl alcohol, pyrene, and vinyl acetate precursors were polymerized and carbonized in each of the inorganic matrixes without the addition of a polymerizing agent. The templates were removed by acid demineralization and the resulting carbon materials were physically characterized by infrared spectroscopy, BET (N 2 ) surface area analysis, energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and elemental analyses. Electrochemical characterizations were also conducted. Cyclic voltammetry was employed to examine the synthesized carbons in the oxidation of catechol to hydroquinone and quinone, a model reaction that is known to be surface dependent. The identities of both the template and the substrate affected the electrochemical response. Additionally, the ability of the new carbons to intercalate and deintercalate lithium was investigated. While all of the synthesized carbons displayed high irreversible capacities consistent with other low-temperature carbons, the carbons prepared from zeolite Y displayed unique voltage curves, suggesting template effects on the carbon. In addition, all of the carbons prepared for this study displayed significant voltage hysteresis on charge/discharge.

Development of Porous Template Carbons from Montmorillonite Clays and Evaluation of Their Toluene Adsorption Behaviors

“…These trends are in agreement with most of the previous studies pertaining to preparation of carbons from silica templates. However, compared to the works using acrylonitrile, furfuryl alcohol or vinyl acetate (Meyers et al, 2001), propylene (Chen et al, 2007), and pyrrole or styrene (Garsuch et al, 2006) as the carbon sources, the carbon replicas derived from sucrose possessed a smaller C content and a greater O content. Since O is mainly contributed by sucrose, the analytical results shown here suggest that the polymerization process in this study should be further optimized to achieve a better dehydration of template-carbon composites.…”

“…However, fewer works are done on using natural mineral clays as templates for carbon production. Meyers et al (2001) prepared high surface area carbon with K10 montmorillonite clay using acrylonitrile, furfuryl alcohol, pyrene, and vinyl acetate as precursors at 600°C. Carbon replicas had C content between 56 and 88% and surface area between 82 and 690 m 2 /g.…”

Preparation of Novel Porous Carbons Using Various Zeolites as Templates.

“…The template carbonization method is a promising approach to the control of pore structure1). Various zeolite-like templates have been used to synthesize a wide variety of carbon porous materials2)- 9), showing that the carbon structure can be designed by selecting a suitable template.…”

Carbon Electrode Materials for Electrochemical Capacitors (review)

“…Після цієї публікації для одержання просторово-впорядкованих вуглецевих структур як екзотемплати почали застосовувати цеоліти [41][42][43], мезопористі кремнеземи і пористий оксид алюмінію [44][45][46][47][48], мембрани з полістиролу [49]. Вуглецеві структури в цих матрицях відтворювали з використанням сахарози [50], фурфурилового спирту [51][52][53][54], акрилонітрилу [44,51], пропілену [41,42], пірену, вінілацетату [55], ацетонітрилу [46,56,57].…”