KOH activation of ordered mesoporous carbons prepared by a soft-templating method and their enhanced electrochemical properties

✍ Scribed by Jin Jin; Shunsuke Tanaka; Yasuyuki Egashira; Norikazu Nishiyama

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 369 KB
• Volume: 48
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6223
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2010.02.005

✦ Synopsis

Ordered mesoporous carbon (COU-2) was synthesized by a soft-templating method. The COU-2 mesoporous carbon was activated by using KOH to improve its porosity. The mesopore size of COU-2 was 5.5 nm and did not change by the KOH activation. But, the BET surface area of COU-2 largely increased from 694 to 1685 m 2 /g and total pore volume was increased from 0.54 to 0.94 cm 3 /g after the KOH activation. The large increase of micropore volume is due to the increase of the surface area. Electrochemical cyclic voltammetry measurements were conducted in aqueous (1 M sulfuric acid) and organic (1 M tetraethyl ammonium tetrafluoroborate/polypropylene carbonate) electrolyte solutions. The KOHactivated COU-2 carbon shows superior capacitances over the COU-2 carbon and a commercial microporous carbon both in aqueous and organic electrolyte solutions. These results suggest that the carbons having regularly-interconnected uniform mesopores and micropores in thin pore walls are desirable for the electrodes in electrochemical doublelayer capacitors.