Preparation of activated carbon nanotubes

摘要

Since carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were first found by Iijima in 1991 1, they have become one of the most interesting materials for their novel structure characters: nanometre hollow tubes, high surface area with a narrow pore distribution size, excellent conductivity and high stability. They are considered as a promising candidate for many materials, such as composite material, catalyst material, field emission material, hydrogen storage material 2-4 and electrochemical supercapacitor electrode material 5,6. Especially, their high surface area with a narrow pore distribution size is very important to applications such as hydrogen storage material and electrochemical supercapacitor electrode material, because materials with larger specific surface area can store more hydrogen and more electric energy. Multi-walled CNTs can be obtained easily, howeve, their specific surface area is low, normally a few hundred square metres per gram. This disdvantage has limited their applications. In this communication, we report a method to enlarge the specific surface area of CNTs with KOH activation. The activated CNTs have not changed their nanometre hollow tube structure. At the same time, their specific surface area is greatly increased. We call the CNTs being activated, the activated CNTs and the CNTs without activation the non-activated CNTs.