Supercapacitors with their high specific power, fast charge/discharge rates and long life cycle bridge the gap between conventional capacitors and batteries. However, more efficient and sustainable synthesis approaches for the respective materials are highly demanded. Specifically, porous functional carbons and their composites are very attractive. Yet, besides the urgent quest for convenient precursors, hard templating or activation processes still have to be applied for the introduction of an adequate porosity. Major drawbacks are the use of hazardous chemicals for the template removal and multiple rather energy consuming synthesis steps.[2, 3]Herein, we present a new tool called �salt templating�, allowing both the synthesis of functional carbons/composites and the introduction of tunable high porosity.[4]The general concept is based on crosslinking of a carbon precursor in the presence of a molten salt phase which simultaneously acts as solvent and template. This unique synthesis gives access to a wide variety of morphologies and porosities where the appropriate choice of salts controls the pore size and architecture on the nanoscale. The pore size can correspond to ion pairs, ion pair clusters and their geometric percolation structures. Contrary to current methods it's a single-step synthesis, while the porogen can easily be removed with water and recovered afterwards for further use. Using ionic liquids (IL) as precursors and their miscibility with salts, not only heteroatom-doped carbons but also composite materials can be synthesized. The IL not only constitutes the nitrogen-doped carbon matrix but also act as nitrogen source, e.g. for metal nitride formation. After aqueous removal of the salt phase, e.g. VN nanoparticles embedded in a nitrogen-doped carbon matrix with surface areas of up to 2400 m2g-1, are obtained. Adding to the the simplicity of the salt templating approach, these materials show superior performance as supercapacitor electrodes, with energy storage densities being comparable to batteries.

Salt templating: Carbons with precise nanoporosity and their application as advanced supercapacitors

248th National Meeting (2014)

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