1. Carbon-coated mesoporous silica as an electrode material
- Author
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Taeri Kwon, Takashi Kyotani, Hirotomo Nishihara, Yoshiaki Fukushima, Norihiko Setoyama, Yu Fukura, and Kouta Inde
- Subjects
Materials science ,Graphene ,Inorganic chemistry ,General Chemistry ,engineering.material ,Mesoporous silica ,Condensed Matter Physics ,Electrochemistry ,law.invention ,Mesoporous organosilica ,Adsorption ,Coating ,Chemical engineering ,Mechanics of Materials ,law ,engineering ,Carbide-derived carbon ,General Materials Science ,Mesoporous material - Abstract
The entire pore surface of FSM-16 type mesoporous silica was uniformly coated with a thin carbon layer by carbonizing pre-doped organic-alcohol molecules onto the pore surface. The thickness of the carbon layer was estimated to be extremely thin, i.e., it corresponds to only 1–2 graphene layers. Even after the carbon-coating, FSM-16 preserves its intrinsic ordered pore structure (hexagonal array of cylindrical pores) and still possesses high surface area of 530 m 2 g −1 , but its pore nature was completely converted into a hydrophobic one, which was revealed from a very small amount of water–vapor adsorption. We characterized the electrochemical properties of the carbon-coated FSM-16 together with the carbon-coated SBA-15 synthesized by using the same coating method. Both of them exhibited electric double-layer capacitance in 1 M H 2 SO 4 and 1 M NaCl, and the values of the capacitance per surface area are comparable to those of conventional activated carbons. We can thus conclude that the present carbon-coating changes the nature of mesoporous silicas from an insulator to an electrical conductor with their ordered pore structures unchanged, and the carbon-coated mesoporous silicas can be used as electrode materials with uniform pores.
- Published
- 2010