Porous carbon materials augmented with heteroatoms derived from hyperbranched biobased benzoxazine resins for enhanced CO2 adsorption and exceptional supercapacitor performance

Abstract

Porous carbon materials doped with heteroatoms are an excellent alternative for applications in CO2 adsorption and supercapacitors. Herein, we present a new approach to obtain heteroatoms (N, O, and S) doped porous carbon materials using bio-based hyperbranched benzoxazine (RES-HP-BZ) as a precursor. Two types of porous carbon materials, poly(RES-HP-BZ)-700 and poly(RES-HP-BZ)-800, were synthesized through a simple calcination method by carbonization and KOH activation of benzoxazine at temperatures of 700 °C and 800 °C, respectively. The chemical structure, texture properties, and surface chemistry characteristics were validated through FTIR, NMR, SEM, XRD, and XPS, respectively. The resulting poly(RES-HP-BZ)-800 exhibited micro and meso porous characteristics with a high SBET of 841 m2 g−1, pore size of 1.14 nm, and pore volume of 0.70 cm3 g−1. The poly(RES-HP-BZ)-800 also showed a high graphitization degree and electrochemically energetic N-6, N-5, N-Q, O-2, and O-3 heteroatoms, which led to a high capacitance of 523 F g−1 (at 0.5 A g−1) as well as CO2 capture of 4.63 mmol g−1 at 298 K. These newly developed bio-based porous carbons derived from hyperbranched bio-benzoxazine with excellent electrochemical performance make them a promising candidate for eco-friendly supercapacitors.