Nanostructuring of carbon materials by means of a calcium phosphate template

Abstract

Nanostructured porous carbon powders were elaborated by means of a hard-template approach, using environmentally friendly materials such as sucrose and Ca3(PO4)2 tricalcium phosphate hydrate as carbon and template sources, respectively. While the naturally occurring carbohydrate is widely used for carbon materials synthesis, the tricalcium phosphate was never suggested as template despite its efficiency as shown in the present study. The resulting carbon materials were characterized by elemental analysis, Raman spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption and electron microscopies. Porous carbon powders with disordered hierarchical porous structure, exhibiting tunable textural properties (specific surface areas, pore volume…), were thus synthesized. For instance, with a template/carbon precursor weight ratio of 1, the specific surface area and pore volume were significantly increased compared to the counterpart which was elaborated without a Ca3(PO4)2 template. The ease of implementation coupled to the low cost of different reagents make the present process potentially competitive for synthesizing porous carbon powders.