Electrochemical hydrogen storage in iron[sbnd]nitrogen dual-doped ordered mesoporous carbon

Abstract

Due to the advantage of catalytic activity on the process of hydrogen sorption/desorption and high affiliation with hydrogen, iron nanoparticles are a hybrid within an ordered mesoporous carbon with nitrogen functional groups on the surface and are used as a host for improving the electrochemical hydrogen storage. This iron and nitrogen dual-doped ordered mesoporous carbon material is synthesized through a nano-casting method which uses SBA-15 as a hard template and iron phthalocyanine as the iron, nitrogen and carbon source. After characterization of the synthesized material by SEM, TEM, XRD, Raman, XPS and Nitrogen sorption/desorption measurements, this hybrid material demonstrated a hydrogen storage capacity of 120 mAh g−1. This is associated with the fast kinetics of electrochemical hydrogen insertion, low self-discharge and the good cycling capability. Furthermore, the hydrogen stored inside the synthesized composited carbon material shows excellent rate performance under various states of discharge current densities. Results suggest that the enhanced electrochemical hydrogen storage performances may due to the electro-catalytic activity of iron nanoparticle, basicity nature of nitrogen functionality on the surface, mesoporous carbon with large surface area, large porosity and interconnected pore structure.