Abstract
Here, we report a facile route for obtaining carbon spheres with fully tunable shell thickness. Using a hard template in chemical vapor deposition (CVD), hollow carbon spheres, solid carbon spheres, and intermediate structures can be obtained with optimized process time. The resulting carbon spheres with particle diameters of ~400 nm, as well as a controllable shell thickness from 0 to 70 nm, had high Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) specific surface area (up to 344.8 m2·g−1) and pore volume (up to 0.248 cm3·g−1). The sphere formation mechanism is also proposed. This simple and reproducible technique can deliver carbon materials for various applications, e.g., energy storage and conversion, adsorption, catalytic, biomedical, and environmental applications.
Highlights
Carbon materials have been extremely popular for decades
Silica spheres used as a template for the carbon spheres had diameter of ~400 nm (Figure 3a,b), which was confirmed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis [34]
The carbon spheres after removal of the silica template had porous shells with thicknesses changing with time
Summary
Carbon materials have been extremely popular for decades. Among them, carbon spheres attracted huge scientific attention [1]. Hard templates allow better control over the fabricated structures Aluminosilicate templates such as halloysite are becoming more and more popular. To induce the formation of spherical carbon materials, silica spheres are the most commonly used templates. This is mainly due to a wide range of available diameters from 5 nm to several hundreds of nanometers, and the ease of the removal procedure from the final product [11,12,13]. Obtained hollow carbon spheres have various structural properties which result in high specific surface area, large pore volume, low density, thermal conductivity, and electrical conductivity, as well as good chemical and mechanical stability [14]. They serve well for biomedical applications [27,28,29], for example in drug delivery [27]
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