Metal carbides are promising materials which have ascendant properties, in particularly, catalytic performance, together with mechanical strength, durability, and thermal stability. Iron carbides have been found to have great potentials in energy conversion and high promotion in magnetic performance such as biomedicine and data storage devices. Meantime, molybdenum carbides are considered as good candidates to replace noble metals, particularly platinum group metals, because of their d-band electronic structures. A critical challenge in metal carbide research is the harsh synthesis condition and the control of well-ordered morphology. Recent research has reported a method to synthesize metal carbides utilizing "urea-glass", which adopts colloidal silica as a template to construct nano-scale structure. In order to combine high surface area and good mass transport properties with metal carbides, we attempted to utilize large pore mesoporous silica MSN-10 (hexagonal, pore size around 10 nm) as the template with metal precursor and a carbon source in the synthesis of Fe3C and Mo2C. Considering the limitations of mass diffusion, the metal precursor and carbon source was repeatedly impregnated into the pores of the templates. Impregnation was repeated until the pore volume reduced to approximately zero. After removal of the silica template, the metal carbide products are uniform hexagonal mesoporous structure with higher surface area compared with conventional synthesis. By repeating impregnation, we are aiming to produce well-ordered mesoporous iron carbides and molybdenum carbides that have potential for improved catalytic properties over traditional metal carbide materials.

Functional ordered mesoporous metal carbides

249th National Meeting (2015)

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