Self-catalyzed synthesis of mesoporous carbons with tunable pore size and structure by soft-templating method

A series of mesoporous carbons (MCs) have been obtained through organic–organic self-assembly method by using phloroglucinol–formaldehyde as carbon precursor and a reverse amphiphilic triblock copolymer as a template. Because of its acidity, the phloroglucinol was used as a catalyst itself. Results show that the pore size and structure of MCs were tailored by simply tuning the weight content of formaldehyde while keeping other reactants constant. A cylindrical mesostructure was obtained when the weight content was 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4. Further increasing the weight content to 1.6 or 2.0, a three-dimensional cage-like mesostructure was obtained. Specific surface area and pore volume up to 485 m²/g and 0.78 cm³/g can be reached, respectively. In addition, the pore size can be tuned in the range of 4.9–14.8 nm by changing the content of formaldehyde.     

Controlled synthesis of highly dispersed platinum nanoparticles in ordered mesoporous carbons

A novel route has been developed to fabricate ordered carbon mesoporous materials with well-dispersed, highly stable Pt nanoparticles of ca. 2-3 nm on the pore walls using platinum acetylacetonate as the co-feeding carbon and Pt precursor.     

Aqueous dye adsorption on ordered mesoporous carbons

Ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) with varying pore size, and microporous carbon, CFY, were synthesized using ordered mesoporous silica SBA-15 and NaY zeolite as hard templates, respectively. N(2) adsorption tests show that the synthesized OMCs possess abundant mesopores and centralized mesopore distribution. Methylene blue (MB) and neutral red (NR) were used as probe molecules to investigate their adsorption behaviors on OMCs and CFY. As evidenced by adsorption tests, the volume of mesopores of which the pore size is larger than 3.5 nm is a crucial factor for the adsorption capacity and adsorption rate of MB on OMCs. However, the most probable pore diameter of OMCs was found to be vital to the adsorption capacity and adsorption rate of NR. Theoretical studies show that the adsorption kinetics of MB and NR on OMCs can be well depicted by using pseudo-second-order kinetic model.     

Partially graphitized ordered mesoporous carbons for high-rate supercapacitors

Partially graphitized ordered mesoporous carbons have been prepared with a soft template method using low-molecular-weight phenolic resol as a carbon source, triblock copolymer F127 as a template, and ferric citrate as a graphitization catalyst. N₂ sorption and transmission electron microscopy analysis show that the ordered mesoporous carbons have been partially graphitized when the carbonization temperature is above 700 °C. The graphitic ordered mesoporous carbons exhibit better rate performance than amorphous ordered mesoporous carbons. The specific capacitance of the graphitic ordered mesoporous carbons (GOMCs) prepared at 700 °C reaches to 112 F g^?1 at a scan rate of up to 1,000 mV s^?1. Its capacitance retention ratio is 64 %, which is much higher than that of the amorphous ordered mesoporous carbons prepared at 600 °C (33 %). High electronic conductivity and ordered mesoporous structure lead to the high electrochemical performance of the partially graphitized ordered mesoporous carbons.     

A family of ordered mesoporous carbons derived from mesophase pitch using ordered mesoporous silicas as templates

A variety of ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) were synthesized using ordered mesoporous silicas (OMSs) as hard templates and the mesophase pitch (MP) as a carbon precursor. The synthesis included the mixing of OMS with MP, the infiltration of OMS with MP at 450–550?°C and the carbonization of MP in OMS/MP composite followed by the dissolution of the OMS template. OMCs with structures of two-dimensional hexagonal arrays of nanorods and three-dimensional arrays of nanospheres were obtained through the replication of silica templates, including large-pore SBA-15, KIT-6, large-pore FDU-12 and SBA-16. In particular, 2-D hexagonal array of carbon nanorods (CMK-3 carbon) with (100) interplanar spacing of ～13 nm as well as an array of carbon nanospheres arranged in the face-centered cubic structure with the unit-cell parameter of 33 nm were successfully prepared. The specific surface areas of the resulting carbons were up to 400 m²/g, and the total pore volumes were up to 0.43 cm³/g, with the highest values achieved when the MP infiltration temperature was 500?°C. The OMCs exhibited narrow mesopore size distributions. As inferred from XRD, the frameworks of OMCs featured semi-graphitic structures even though moderate carbonization temperature (850?°C) was employed.     

Preparation of activated ordered mesoporous carbons with a channel structure

Activated ordered mesoporous carbons with a channel structure (AOMCs-CS) were successfully prepared by imposing CO(2) activation on ordered mesopore carbon C-FDU-15. It is found that the continuous carbon framework of the precursor C-FDU-15 plays an important role in keeping the order structure of the resulting AOMCs-CS. The mild activation (e.g., 31 wt % burnoff) does not impair the order degree. After that, the order degree gradually decreases with further increasing burnoff. However, the basic hexagonal mesostructure of C-FDU-15 can still be found in the AOMCs-CS when the burnoff is up to 73 wt %, although many carbon walls are punched and thus many larger mesopores and marcropores are generated. With increasing burnoff, the surface area and volume of micropores increase first and then decrease, and the surface area and volume of mesopores continuously increase. The highest measured Brunaruer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area, micropore volume, and total pore volume of the AOMCs-CS reach 2004 m(2)/g, 0.50 cm(3)/g, and 1.22 cm(3)/g, respectively.     

Facile synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons from F108/resorcinol-formaldehyde composites obtained in basic media

Highly ordered mesoporous carbon with cubic Im3m symmetry has been synthesized successfully via a direct carbonization of self-assembled F108 (EO(132)PO(50)EO(132)) and resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) composites obtained in a basic medium of nonaqueous solution.     

A simple method to ordered mesoporous carbons containing nickel nanoparticles

A series of ordered mesoporous carbons containing magnetic Ni nanoparticles (Ni-OMCs) with a variety of Ni loadings was made by a simple one-pot synthetic procedure through carbonization of phenolic resin-Pluronic block copolymer composites containing various amount of nickel nitrate. Such composite materials were characterized by N₂ sorption, XRD, and STEM. Ni-OMCs exhibited high BET surface area, uniform pore size, and large pore volume without obvious pore blockage with a Ni loading as high as 15 wt%. Ni nanoparticles were crystalline with a face-center-cubic phase and observed mainly in the carbon matrix and on the outer surface as well. The average particle size of Ni nanoparticles was dependent on the preparation (carbonization) temperature and Ni loading; the higher the temperature was used and the more the Ni was incorporated, the larger the Ni nanoparticles were observed. One of the applications of Ni-OMCs was demonstrated as magnetically separable adsorbents. Dedicated to Professor Mietek Jaroniec on the occasion of his 60th birthday.     

Sol-gel synthesis of ordered mesoporous alumina

Well-ordered mesoporous alumina materials with high surface area and a narrow pore size distribution were synthesized using a sol-gel based self assembly technique.     

Adsorption of bulky molecules of nonylphenol ethoxylate on ordered mesoporous carbons

Ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) with varying pore sizes were prepared using ordered mesoporous silica SBA-15 as hard templates. The OMCs possess abundant mesopores with narrow pore size distribution, on which the adsorption behavior of bulky molecules of nonylphenol ethoxylate (NPE) were investigated. The isotherms of NPE on OMCs can be fitted by Langmuir adsorption model, evidenced by the adsorption data. The surface area of the pores larger than 1.5 nm is a crucial factor to the adsorption capacity of NPE, whereas the most probable pore diameter of OMCs is crucial to the adsorption rate of NPE. The adsorption temperature has more significant effects on adsorption rate than the adsorption capacity. Theoretical studies show that the adsorption kinetics of NPE on OMCs can be depicted with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. In addition, thermodynamic parameters of adsorption were evaluated based on the equilibrium constants related to the equilibrium of adsorption at different temperatures.     

Synthesis of mesoporous carbons using ordered and disordered mesoporous silica templates and polyacrylonitrile as carbon precursor

Mesoporous carbons were synthesized from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) using ordered and disordered mesoporous silica templates and were characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), powder X-ray diffraction, nitrogen adsorption, and thermogravimetry. The pores of the silica templates were infiltrated with carbon precursor (PAN) via polymerization of acrylonitrile from initiation sites chemically bonded to the silica surface. This polymerization method is expected to allow for a uniform filling of the template with PAN and to minimize the introduction of nontemplated PAN, thus mitigating the formation of nontemplated carbon. PAN was stabilized by heating to 573 K under air and carbonized under N2 at 1073 K. The resulting carbons exhibited high total pore volumes (1.5-1.8 cm3 g(-1)), with a primary contribution of the mesopore volume and with relatively low microporosity. The carbons synthesized using mesoporous templates with a 2-dimensional hexagonal structure (SBA-15 silica) and a face-centered cubic structure (FDU-1 silica) exhibited narrow pore size distributions (PSDs), whereas the carbon synthesized using disordered silica gel template had broader PSD. TEM showed that the SBA-15-templated carbon was composed of arrays of long, straight, or curved nanorods aligned in 2-D hexagonal arrays. The carbon replica of FDU-1 silica appeared to be composed of ordered arrays of spheres. XRD provided evidence of some degree of ordering of graphene sheets in the carbon frameworks. Elemental analysis showed that the carbons contain an appreciable amount of nitrogen. The use of our novel infiltration method and PAN as a carbon precursor allowed us to obtain ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) with (i) very high mesopore volume, (ii) low microporosity, (iii) low secondary mesoporosity, (iv) large pore diameter (8-12 nm), and (v) semi-graphitic framework, which represent a desirable combination of features that has not been realized before for OMCs.     

Nitric acid oxidation of ordered mesoporous carbons for use in electrochemical supercapacitors

Ordered mesoporous carbon materials with high microporosity were synthesized by a low temperature autoclaving of citric acid-catalyzed polymerized resorcinol/formaldehyde in the presence of the triblock copolymer F127 and were activated by nitric acid oxidation. The materials were used as electrode materials in electrochemical supercapacitors. A bimodal pore size distribution of 2.1–2.3 and 5.3 nm with a surface area of 465–578 m² g^?1 and pore volume of 0.44–0.54 cm³ g^?1 was obtained with the retention of an ordered mesoporous structure after nitric acid (2 M) treatment. The introduced functional groups produced a pseudocapacitance, which resulted in an increase in the specific capacitance. The electrochemical capacitance of the resulting mesoporous carbons showed a marked increase after 3 h of nitric acid activation, exhibiting a high value of 295 F g^?1 at the scan rate of 10 mV s^?1 in 6 M KOH aqueous solution and good cycling stability with specific capacitance retention over 500 cycles.     

Synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons with channel structure from an organic-organic nanocomposite

Mesoporous carbons with ordered channel structure (COU-1) have been successfully fabricated via a direct carbonization of an organic-organic nanocomposite.     

原位掺杂法制备氮掺杂中孔炭及乙炔氢氯化反应性能

聚氯乙烯(PVC)是世界五大工程塑料之一,在工业、农业、建筑、电力及通信等领域有着非常广泛的应用.氯乙烯(VCM)作为合成 PVC的单体,其生产工艺以源于煤化工路线的乙炔氢氯化法工艺为主,但是该工艺目前采用的是氯化汞催化剂,存在较为严重的环境污染问题.开发新型无汞催化剂成为电石法生产 VCM亟待解决的问题.氮掺杂炭基非金属催化剂成本低廉,制备简单,在诸多反应中展现了较好的性能,成为近几年多相催化领域的一个研究热点,在乙炔氢氯化反应中也具有较好的活性,但是对活性中心的鉴别及制备方法的研究还有待深入.本文报道了一种一步原位尿素掺杂氮的中孔炭的制备方法,采用氮气吸附-脱附、高分辨透射电子显微镜、元素分析和X射线光电子能谱(XPS)等表征手段研究了氮掺杂中孔炭的结构、氮含量及存在形式,并与两步尿素改性方法做了对比,探究了氮掺杂形式与中孔炭乙炔氢氯化反应性能之间的关系,同时考察了尿素用量对氮掺杂中孔炭的氮含量和存在形式的影响.元素分析结果表明,原位合成法能有效地将氮掺杂进骨架中,随着制备过程中尿素用量增加,得到的氮掺杂中孔炭中的氮含量增加,可达3.6 wt%.后处理法的掺氮效果较差,材料氮含量仅为0.2 wt%. XPS测试进一步表明,一步法原位法可以得到石墨型氮占据主导地位的氮掺杂中孔炭,石墨型氮约占70%左右,后处理制备的氮掺杂中孔炭中石墨氮、吡啶氮和吡咯氮三种形式含量相差不大.对不同方法合成的氮掺杂介孔炭的乙炔氢氯化反应催化性能进行了评价,结果显示,无论是原位合成还是后处理制备的氮掺杂中孔炭,其活性均比中孔炭得到一定提升.氮的引入能有效提高材料的乙炔氢氯化反应性能.原位合成法制备的氮掺杂中孔炭在乙炔氢氯化反应中的催化性能远高于后处理法.对于原位合成的氮掺杂中孔炭,在一定范围内,随着氮含量的增加,催化活性提高,但当尿素用量过高时,虽然氮含量增加,催化活性却有所下降,这归因于孔结构坍塌和比表面积下降.     

Thermodynamic and neutron scattering study of hydrogen adsorption in two mesoporous ordered carbons

Two mesoporous ordered carbon materials (MOCs) have been synthesized from silica templates by using sucrose as the carbon precursor. The textural characterization using Ar, N2, and CO2 adsorption combined with neutron diffraction showed that the two samples exhibit a significant microporous volume close to 0.5 cm3/g and an ordered network of mesopores. For both MCM48 and SBA15 templated carbons, adsorption first proceeds with the filling of micropores and then by the filling of mesopores with an adsorption energy close to the enthalpy of vaporization of bulk hydrogen. The hydrogen isosteric heat of adsorption in the micropores (6-8 kJ/mol) is significantly larger than that on the graphite surface (approximately 4 kJ/mol) but still too small for a reasonable use of these MOCs as hydrogen adsorbents for storage at room temperature. The neutron scattering study showed that the structure at 10 K of the adsorbed deuterium phase is poorly organized; it exhibits short and medium range orders of about 13 angstroms in micropores and about 20 angstroms in mesopores, respectively. The average distance between adsorbed molecules decreases with coverage by about 10%. In the mesopores, the diffracted line is consistent with a pseudohexagonal packing.     

Effect of pore packing defects in 2-d ordered mesoporous carbons on ionic transport

Ordered mesoporous materials show great importance in energy, environmental, and chemical engineering. The diffusion of guest species in mesoporous networks plays an important role in these applications, especially for energy storage, such as supercapacitors based on ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs). The ion diffusion behavior in two different 2-D hexagonal OMCs was investigated by using cyclic voltametry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. In addition, transmission electron microscopy, small-angle X-ray diffraction, and nitrogen cryosorption methods were used to study the pore structure variations of these two OMCs. It was found that, for the OMC with defective pore channels (termed as pore packing defects), the gravimetric capacitance was greatly decayed when the voltage scan rate was increased. The experimental results suggest that, for the ion diffusion in 2-D hexagonal OMCs with similar mesopore size distribution, the pore packing defect is a dominant dynamic factor.     

Capacitive performance of ordered mesoporous carbons with tunable porous texture in ionic liquid electrolytes

Ordered mesoporous carbons with tunable pore size and surface chemical properties are prepared by doping boric acid using a hard-templating method. The capacitive performance of these carbons is investigated in two common ionic liquids of EMImBF₄ and EMImTSFI. As demonstrated by the structure analysis, the pore size increases from 3.3 to 5.7 nm and the content of oxygenated groups on the carbon surface increases from 2.0 to 5.2 mol% with the increase of the boron doping from 0 to 50 mol%. In ionic liquid electrolyte, the carbons mainly show typical electric double layer capacitance, and the capacitance retention ratio and ion diffusion in the carbon channels is determined to the surface chemical property. The prepared carbons present visible pseudo-capacitance due to the rapid redox reactions of the oxygenated groups in hydrophilic EMImBF₄, reflecting by the increasing of the specific surface capacitance, while no visible pseudo-capacitive behavior was observed in hydrophobic EMImTSFI.     

Temperature-programmed microwave-assisted synthesis of SBA-15 ordered mesoporous silica

The currently available microwave technology permits the development and implementation of a temperature-programmed microwave-assisted synthesis (TPMS) of ordered mesoporous silicas (OMSs). Unlike in previously reported syntheses of OMSs, in which only the final hydrothermal treatment was carried out under microwave irradiation, this work takes advantage of the existing capabilities of modern microwave systems to program the temperature and time for the entire synthesis of these materials. To demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed microwave-assisted synthesis, besides programming two consecutive steps involving initial stirring of the gel at a lower temperature and static hydrothermal treatment at a higher temperature, we explored the possibility of temperature programming of the latter step. A major advantage of microwave technology is the feasibility of temperature and time programming, which has been demonstrated by the synthesis of one of the most popular OMSs, SBA-15, over an unprecedented range of temperatures from 40 to 200 degrees C. Since the synthesis of OMSs has not yet been explored and reported at temperatures exceeding 150 degrees C, this work is focused on the SBA-15 samples prepared at higher temperatures (such as 160, 180, and even 200 degrees C). These SBA-15 samples show better thermal stability than those synthesized at commonly used temperatures either under conventional or microwave conditions. Moreover, a partial decomposition of the template during high-temperature microwave-assisted syntheses does not compromise the formation of well-ordered SBA-15 materials. This study shows that the simplicity and capability of temperature and time programming in TPMS allows one not only to tune the adsorption and structural properties of OMSs but also to easily screen a wide range of conditions in order to optimize and scale-up their preparation as well as to significantly reduce the time of synthesis from days to hours.     

Efficient synthesis and sulfonation of ordered mesoporous carbon materials

Ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) with hexagonal structure were efficiently synthesized via cooperative self-assembly of phenol/formaldehyde resol and surfactant F127 under acidic aqueous conditions. Induced by HCl, a gel phase mainly containing phenol/formaldehyde resol and F127 was obtained within several hours. X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and nitrogen adsorption isotherms indicated that the synthesized samples possess 2-D hexagonal mesostructure. The influence of the synthesis conditions, including acid concentration and mass ratio of resol to F127, was investigated. When the acid concentration was fixed in the range of 0.6-2.0 M and the mass ratio of resol to F127 in the range of 3.5-4.0, highly ordered mesoporous carbon could be synthesized. The synthesized OMCs could be easily sulfonated in concentrated sulfuric acid at elevated temperature. The results indicate that the mesostructural stability and the content of the surface sulfonic acid (SO(3)H) groups depend mainly on the pyrolysis temperature of the OMCs and the sulfonation temperature, suggesting that the combination of pyrolysis and sulfonation temperature is essential for developing OMCs with high densities of SO(3)H groups.     

Catalytic synthesis of carbon nanotubes over ordered mesoporous matrices

Pyrolytic decomposition of acetylene over the surface of nickel-, cobalt- and iron-containing ordered mesoporous MCM-41 silicas has been studied. Catalytically active matrices have been prepared by chemisorption of volatile metal acetylacetonate complexes on the silica surface. Reduction of the supported metal-containing compounds was carried out in hydrogen or acetylene atmosphere. Acetylene is used not only as a source of carbon in synthesis of the nanostructures but also as a reagent capable of reducing metal ions in the surface chemical compounds. Formation of carbon nanotubes and nanofibers is shown to depend on the pyrolysis conditions.