Preparation of pitch-based carbon foam using polyurethane foam template

摘要

Carbon foams were first obtained in the late 1960s as reticulated vitreous carbon foams [1]. Since then, various carbon foams have been developed rapidly. Pitch-based carbon foams attracted much attention and emerged as materials of great promise due to their specific properties, such as light weight (0.2-0.8 g/cm~3), high-temperature tolerance (3000 deg C under inert atmosphere), large specific surface with open cell structure, and adjustable thermal and electrical conductivity. The potential applications of carbon foams include high-temperature thermal insulation, high thermally conductive heat sinks, battery electrodes, energy absorption materials, catalyst supports and filters, etc. [2]. An examination of the literature revealed that most research focused on the methods based on foaming technique [3-6], Due to severe requirement for raw materials and processing conditions, these methods led to high production cost of carbon foams. In addition, it seemed difficult to obtain carbon foams with large and uniform cells by these methods [7]. This may be a limiting factor in many applications ranging from electrode current collectors to catalyst supports.