Ordered Mesoporous Carbons with High Micropore Content and Tunable Structure Prepared by Combined Hard and Salt Templating as Electrode Materials in Electric Double-Layer Capacitors

Abstract

Synthesis of high surface area carbon materials with hierarchical pore structure is reported. Combined salt templating with ZnCl2 and hard templating with SBA‐15 is used to produce ordered mesoporous and microporous hard–salt‐templated carbons (OM‐HSTCs) from simple sucrose as carbon precursor. OM‐HSTCs achieve specific surface areas of more than 2600 m2 g−1 and total pore volumes up to 2.2 cm3 g−1. In comparison to purely hard‐templated ordered mesoporous carbons, the additional salt template leads to high micropore volume and provides control over the size/distribution of micro‐ and mesopores and over the carbon microstructure. This method combines carbonization and the formation of well‐defined micropores in one step and is more versatile in terms of resulting pore structure than previously reported routes toward ordered mesoporous/microporous carbons. When applied as electrode materials in electric double‐layer capacitors with 1 m tetraethylammonium tetrafluoroborate in acetonitrile organic electrolyte, OM‐HSTCs combine high gravimetric capacitance (133 F g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) resulting from high micropore volume with high capacitance retention under high‐power conditions (126 F g−1 at 40 A g−1), exceeding the purely microporous or purely ordered mesoporous reference materials.