Solid-state synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbon catalysts via a mechanochemical assembly through coordination cross-linking

Pengfei Zhang, Li Wang, Shize Yang, Jennifer A. Schott, Xiaofei Liu, Shannon M. Mahurin, Caili Huang, Yu Zhang, Pasquale F. Fulvio, Matthew F. Chisholm, Sheng Dai

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195 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) have demonstrated great potential in catalysis, and as supercapacitors and adsorbents. Since the introduction of the organic-organic self-assembly approach in 2004/2005 until now, the direct synthesis of OMCs is still limited to the wet processing of phenol-formaldehyde polycondensation, which involves soluble toxic precursors, and acid or alkali catalysts, and requires multiple synthesis steps, thus restricting the widespread application of OMCs. Herein, we report a simple, general, scalable and sustainable solid-state synthesis of OMCs and nickel OMCs with uniform and tunable mesopores (~4-10 nm), large pore volumes (up to 0.96 cm3 g-1) and high-surface areas exceeding 1,000m2 g-1, based on a mechanochemical assembly between polyphenol-metal complexes and triblock co-polymers. Nickel nanoparticles (~5.40 nm) confined in the cylindrical nanochannels show great thermal stability at 600°C. Moreover, the nickel OMCs offer exceptional activity in the hydrogenation of bulky molecules (~2 nm).

Original languageEnglish
Article number15020
JournalNature Communications
Volume8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017

Funding

P.F.Z., S.M.M., Y.Z. and S.D. were supported by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy. L.W. and X.F.L. were supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB933201) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2015AA034603). The electron microscopy at ORNL (S.Z.Y. and M.F.C.) was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

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