Phytic acid-induced self-assembled chitosan gel-derived N, P–co-doped porous carbon for high-performance CO2 capture and supercapacitor

Abstract

Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials (HPCMs) have attracted great attention due to their excellent physical and chemical properties and the enhanced performance of multiple heteroatom co-doping. Herein, N, P-co-doped porous carbon materials (NPPCs) are developed via a novel synthesis of the phytic acid-induced self-assembled chitosan aerogel followed by pyrolysis and activation. Phytic acid serves as a P source, acid regulator and structure-directing agent for improved activation efficiency to create more pores. A little of NaNO 3 is used both as a template and activator simultaneously. The porosity and N content of such NPPCs are controlled by rationally tuning the pyrolysis temperature and the mount of NaNO 3 . The NPPC-0.75-600 delivers a good CO 2 adsorption capability of 3.02 and 5.31 mmol g −1 at 100 and 500 kPa, respectively, and has an excellent stability with almost no adsorption capacity decay even after successive 20 cycles. For supercapacitors (SCs), the NPPC-0.75-700 also displays a high capacitance of 231.2 F g −1 at 1 A g −1 and an outstanding stability at circa 96.7% initial capacity after 10000 cycles. These results highlight the great potential of such NPPCs in CO 2 capture and SCs, and the novel synthetical route offers new insights for the readily scalable production of HPCMs. • Phytic acid induced chitosan gel and served as a P source and activation agent. • N,P-co-doped porous carbon delivered a CO 2 capture ability of 5.31 mmol g −1 at 298 K. • N,P-co-doped porous carbon exhibited specific capacitance at 231.2 F g −1 at 1 A g −1 . • CO 2 capture and supercapacitor performances were substantially improved by P doping.