Pyrolysis of self-assembled block copolymer-phenolic resins is an effective and facile method to prepare hierarchical ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) materials and regulate the porous structure. Block copolymer-derived OMC has great potential in many applications, but the formation process and the kinetic mechanism remain unclear. To address this, a diblock copolymer poly(4-vinyl pyridine)-block-polystyrene (P4VP-b-PS) was employed as the structure agent with phenol-formaldehyde resin as the carbon precursor to synthesize OMC with relatively large pore size and the formation process was investigated. The morphology and internal chemical state were analyzed using the SEM, TEM, XRD, in suit Raman spectra, XPS, TG-DSC and AFM. The whole formation process can be summarized into two steps: 1) the pore evolution from the degradation of PS domain, and 2) the growth of the regularity and the graphitization of the internal carbon structure. The as-prepared PS-b-P4VP-derived OMC exhibited apparent intolerance to the high temperature. Furthermore, the thickness of OMC could be controlled via adjusting the spin-coating speed of the polymer solution, which showed a power functional relationship with the speeds. The metal loading has also been studied to reveal its application potential and unexpected pseudo-atomic-scale platinum based on OMC was obtained with a relatively high electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) value (112.14 m2/g), showing great potential in single-atom catalyst and electrocatalytic applications.

Insight into the growth of diblock-copolymer-derived ordered mesoporous carbon with pseudo-atomic-scale platinum

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.