Synthesis of High-Surface-Area TiN/Carbon Composite Materials with Hierarchical Porosity via “Reactive Templating”

Abstract

In this work, the synthesis of porous TiN/carbon composites via “reactive hard templating” is presented. The concept of this synthesis strategy is to use the template, responsible for the final morphology of the TiN/carbon material, as a reactant and nitrogen source; template removal is unnecessary as the final product is obtained as such. As reactive templates, two types of macroporous graphitic carbon nitride powders with different pore sizes (60 nm or 500 nm spherical pores) were used. The powders were infiltrated with a titanium precursor solution, aged for 1 night at 100 °C under air, and subsequently annealed at 800 °C to create the final nanocrystalline porous TiN/carbon structures. The final products were analyzed by XRD, TEM, HRTEM, EA, and gas sorption experiments. It was shown that the morphology of the resulting material generates from a nanocoating of the macropores of the carbon nitride reactive template, yielding aggregated hollow TiN/C spheres with hierarchical porosity.