Advantageous Effect on Porosity of Template Carbon Materials by Residue of Templates

Abstract

Porous ceramic materials are generally used for templates in synthesis of new porous carbon materials by template method. In the synthesis procedure, template materials are finally dissolved by acid or alkaline solution. Improvement of carbon content in the carbon materials by the process is expected to be effective for advancement of porosity and specific surface areas of the specimens, therefore realization of elimination of templates to a maximum extent is assumed to be desirable. In this report, we have prepared several porous carbon materials by the use of natural soils or clays for templates, and improved their carbon content by ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) treatment. However, their specific surface areas demonstrate a tendency to decrease contrary to the expectation. The result suggests that the original carbon specimens are rather effective in porosity, and the residue of templates can also play a useful part for specific surface areas of the carbon materials. This effect is attractive for improvement of synthesis process of porous carbon materials, which have high specific surface area, from viewpoints of practical applications.