A Strategy of Bifunctional Nanoscale Melamine‐Resin Sphere Template to Fabricate Porous Carbons

Abstract

The pore structures of carbons profoundly affect their properties and functions. The hard template method has been extensively employed to fabricate porous carbons. Generally, the heteroatoms of porous carbons remarkably boost their performances, thus various of strategies have been carried out to incorporate the heteroatoms into porous carbons. The usual hard templates, such as silica nanoparticle and polystyrene sphere, only function as a pore‐forming agent. Herein, nanoscale melamine resin spheres (NMRSs) are fabricated for the first time. NMRSs can be decomposed to generate the template mesopore in situ during the pyrolysis of carbon precursors. Moreover, NMRSs also can work as a nitrogen‐dopant for porous carbons. As a demonstration, the N,P‐codoped hierarchically porous carbons are prepared using NMRSs as both pore‐forming agent and dopant, which exhibit excellent catalytic performances for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), close to or better than those of the best performing metal‐free doped carbon catalysts for the ORR. Therefore, this bifunctional template paves a facile pathway to fabricate porous carbons.

Hierarchically porous doped carbons fabricated by the strategy of ion transfer coordination (ITC)

“…S7a, † all the NCNBs exhibit two broad diffraction peaks at 25 and 43 , assigned to the typical (002) and (101) diffractions of carbon, respectively. 38 In Fig. S7b, † they all show the D band at 1343 cm À1 and G band at 1588 cm À1 .…”

“…2b are type-IV isotherms with a distinct hysteresis loop, validating the existence of mesopores. 38 The rapidly increasing proles at low P/P 0 (<0.01) and high P/P 0 (>0.95) illustrate that NCNBs possess micropores and macropores. 39 Their pore-size distribution proles display a peak centered at $30 nm (Fig.…”

“…S6a †) display three characteristic peaks at 284.6, 400, and 532 eV, which can be assigned to C 1s, N 1s, and O 1s, respectively. 38 Their chemical compositions are approximate (Table S2 †). Their high-resolution N 1s XPS spectra are shown in Fig.…”

“…S6b-e, † which can be tted to four peaks at 397.9, 399.1, 400.0 and 403.8 eV, attributed to the pyridinic-N, pyrrolic-N, quaternary-N, and oxidic-N atoms, respectively. 35,38 The graphitic and pyridinic N atoms constitute the catalytically active sites. 38 The contents of the four kinds of nitrogen atoms are shown in Fig.…”

“…35,38 The graphitic and pyridinic N atoms constitute the catalytically active sites. 38 The contents of the four kinds of nitrogen atoms are shown in Fig. S6f.…”