Self-Assembly Synthesis of N-Doped Carbon Aerogels for Supercapacitor and Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction

Junli Zhang; Gaoli Chen; Qian Zhang; Fei Kang; Bo You

doi:10.1021/acsami.5b01660

Self-Assembly Synthesis of N-Doped Carbon Aerogels for Supercapacitor and Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2015 Jun 17;7(23):12760-6. doi: 10.1021/acsami.5b01660. Epub 2015 Jun 5.

Authors

Junli Zhang¹, Gaoli Chen¹, Qian Zhang², Fei Kang¹, Bo You¹

Affiliations

¹ †Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
² ‡Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-0300, United States.

PMID: 26024152
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b01660

Abstract

The rational design of high-performance and cheap nanomaterials for multiple sustainable energy storage applications is extremely urgent but remains challenging. Herein, a facile commercial melamine-sponge-directed multicomponent surface self-assembly strategy has been reported to synthesize N-doped carbon aerogels (NCAs) with low density (0.01 g cm(-3)), large open pores, and high surface area (1626 m2 g(-1)). The commercial melamine sponge simultaneously serves as a green N source for N-doping and a 3D scaffold to buffer electrolytes for reducing ion transport resistance and minimizing ion diffusion distance. With their tailored architecture characteristics, the NCAs-based supercapacitor and oxygen reduction electrocatalyst show excellent performance.

Keywords: carbon aerogels; electrocatalysis; nitrogen doping; oxygen reduction; supercapacitor.