Synthesis and characterization of mesoporous carbon through inexpensive mesoporous silica as template

摘要

Mesoporous silica materials have been synthesized through sol-gel reaction using inexpensive sodium silicate as source of silica and low cost hydroxy carboxylic acid compounds as templates/pore forming agents.The material measured surface area of 1014 m~2/g,pore diameter of 65 A and pore volume of 1.4 cc/g when parameters like time and temperature of synthesis along with mole ratio of TA/SiO_2 were optimized.Here TA stands for tartaric acid.Carbonization of sucrose inside the pores of above silica material at 900 deg C followed by removal of silica framework using aqueous ethanoic solution of NaOH gave rise to mesoporous carbon material.The resulting materials were characterized by N_2-sorption,FTIR spectroscopy,X-ray diffraction,transmission electron microscopy,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,thermal analysis and cyclic voltammetry.Three dimensional interconnecting wormhole channel arrangement of mesoporous silica template leads to mesoporous carbon replica with surface area of 1200 m~2/g.X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic study(XPS)of the mesoporous carbon material shows the concentration of carbon atom in the range of 97-98% with 1-2% oxygen and negligible amount of silica.The electrochemical double layer capacitance behavior of carbon material with the specific capacitance value of 88.0 F/g at the scan rate of 1 mV/s appears to be promising.