Quantitative Control of Pore Size of Mesoporous Carbon Nanospheres through the Self-Assembly of Diblock Copolymer Micelles in Solution

Hao Tian; Zhixing Lin; Fugui Xu; Jingxu Zheng; Xiaodong Zhuang; Yiyong Mai; Xinliang Feng

doi:10.1002/smll.201600364

Quantitative Control of Pore Size of Mesoporous Carbon Nanospheres through the Self-Assembly of Diblock Copolymer Micelles in Solution

Small. 2016 Jun;12(23):3155-63. doi: 10.1002/smll.201600364. Epub 2016 Apr 27.

Authors

Hao Tian¹, Zhixing Lin¹, Fugui Xu¹, Jingxu Zheng², Xiaodong Zhuang¹, Yiyong Mai¹, Xinliang Feng^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan RD, Shanghai, 200240, P. R. China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan RD, Shanghai, 200240, P. R. China.
³ Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, Technische Universität Dresden, Mommsenstrasse 4, 01062, Dresden, Germany.

PMID: 27120340
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201600364

Abstract

This paper reports facile synthesis of nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon nanospheres (MCNSs) with average diameters of around 300 nm and well-controlled pore sizes ranging from 8 to 38 nm, by employing polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) diblocks with different PS block lengths as the soft templates and dopamine as the carbon-rich precursor. For the first time, a linear equation is achieved for the quantitative control of the average pore size of MCNSs by simply adjusting a block length of diblock copolymer. The resultant MCNSs possess high surface areas of up to 450 m(2) g(-1) and nitrogen doping contents of up to ≈3 wt%. As electrode materials of supercapacitors, the MCNSs exhibit excellent electrochemical performance with high specific capacitances of up to 350 F g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1) , superior rate capability, and cycling stability. Interestingly, the specific capacitance of the MCNSs reduces linearly with increasing pore size, whereas the normalized capacitance by specific surface area remains invariable. This represents a new spectrum of the relationship between electrochemical capacitance and pore size (>5 nm) for porous carbons, which makes a complement to the existing spectra focusing on pore diameters of <5 nm.

Keywords: block copolymer; mesoporous carbon spheres; pore size; soft template; supercapacitors.