Hollow carbon nanospheres using an asymmetric triblock copolymer structure directing agent

Yunqi Li; Haibo Tan; Rahul R Salunkhe; Jing Tang; Lok Kumar Shrestha; Bishnu Prasad Bastakoti; Hongpan Rong; Toshiaki Takei; Joel Henzie; Yusuke Yamauchi; Katsuhiko Ariga

doi:10.1039/c6cc07360c

Hollow carbon nanospheres using an asymmetric triblock copolymer structure directing agent

Chem Commun (Camb). 2016 Dec 20;53(1):236-239. doi: 10.1039/c6cc07360c.

Affiliations

¹ World Premier International (WPI) Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. Ariga.Katsuhiko@nims.go.jp Yamauchi.Yusuke@nims.go.jp.
² World Premier International (WPI) Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. Ariga.Katsuhiko@nims.go.jp Yamauchi.Yusuke@nims.go.jp and Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan.
³ World Premier International (WPI) Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. Ariga.Katsuhiko@nims.go.jp Yamauchi.Yusuke@nims.go.jp and Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan and Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM), University of Wollongong, Squires Way, North Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.

PMID: 27921107
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc07360c

Abstract

We introduce a simple method to prepare hollow carbon nanospheres (HCNs) by using triblock copolymer poly(styrene-b-2-vinylpyridine-b-ethylene oxide) (PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO) micelles as a new class of soft-templates. Simply by changing the solvent we can prepare ultra-small sized micelles of the triblock copolymer PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO soft template to obtain HCNs with ultra-small diameters (43 nm) and hollow cores (19 nm). Furthermore, we use these HCNs to make electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) that exhibit superior performance.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't