Self-Assembly Synthesis of Large-Pore Fe/N-Codoped Ordered Mesoporous Carbon for Supercapacitor Electrode Materials

Abstract

A slightly optimized method of evaporation induced self-assembly (EISA) has been used to synthesize large-pore Fe/N-codoped ordered mesoporous carbon directly by using phenolic resin as the carbon source and commercial triblock copolymer F127 as the soft template, as well as pyrrole and urea as the nitrogen source. The large-pore mesostructure was obtained by introducing FeCl3 for inducing pyrrole polymerization under acidic conditions during the self-assembly process. Meanwhile, the pore size can be adjusted through altering the molar ratio of FeCl3 to pyrrole monomer. The prepared materials have a particularly tortuous pore channel and large-pore size distributions (4 nm to18 nm), high specific surface area (288 to 496 m2·g−1) and pore volume (0.40 to 0.62 cm3·g−1). Electrochemical tests demonstrate that all samples possess excellent performance of electric double-layer capacitors and rate capability. Notably, the sample S0.5 with a pore size of 11 nm can obtain a specific capacitance of 257 F·g−1 at a current density of 1 A·g−1 and the capacitance retention of 92% after 1000 cycles at 10 A·g−1. It can be concluded that these advantages have promise to provide the new thought for large-pore mesoporous carbon materials in the application of supercapacitor electrode materials.