Facile Synthesis of Transparent Mesostructured Composites and Corresponding Crack-free Mesoporous Carbon/Silica Monoliths

Abstract

Transparent ordered mesostructured resin-silica composite monoliths with uniform rectangular shape which fully copies the inner-shape of vessels and size (5 × 3 × 0.3 cm3) are prepared via a facile approach of evaporation induced self-assembly (EISA) without adding any protecting agent by using triblock copolymer Pluronic F127 as a template. Ordered mesoporous carbon-silica composite monoliths can be obtained in a wide range of silica content (34–82 wt %) after calcination in N2. Monolithic shape can be maintained with shrinkage (∼20%) in sizes. Furthermore, each component of the composites can be easily removed after the simple post treatments. After etching silica, mesoporous carbon monoliths retain the same in shape and sizes, but show much larger pore volume (∼2.65 cm3/g) and higher surface area (∼1800 m2/g) than the carbon–silica composites. Besides, mesoporous silica monoliths with large pore size (∼14.6 nm) show an integral and uniform shape after air combustion. The obtained mesoporous carbon monoliths show high capacitance (186 F/g) and high cycling stability (8% capacitance loss after 1000 cycles), exhibiting an excellent potential in capacitor applications.