A facile controllable preparation of highly porous carbon foam and its application in photocatalysis

摘要

In this work, the carbon foam with layered porous structure was fabricated by freeze-drying and carbonization from the mixture of starch and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). Notably, the mass ratio of Starch/PVP and the carbonization temperature had great influences on the morphology and microstructure of the carbon foam. In addition, the porosity and carbon yield of the carbon foam increased as the proportion of starch. And when the carbonization temperature increased from 600 degrees C to 1000 degrees C, the porosity of the foamed carbon increased from 87.45 % to 92 %, and the carbon yield of the carbon foam decreased from 25.09 % to 19.98 %. To explore the application of carbon foam, the carbon foam loaded with ZnO nanorods (ZnO/CF) was fabricated and employed as photocatalyst. The degradation efficiencies of Rhodamine B (RhB) were about 98% under the ultraviolet light and visible light, respectively. This implied that the carbon foam may have a broad application prospect in photocatalysis.