Composition, structure and potential energy application of nitrogen doped carbon cryogels

Abstract

Resorcinol–formaldehyde (RF) cryogels were synthesized by sol–gel polycondensation of resorcinol with formaldehyde and freeze-drying was carried out with t-butanol. Carbon cryogel (CC) was obtained by pyrolyzing RF cryogels in an inert atmosphere to 950 °C. Nitrogen doped CCs (CCN) were synthesized by introducing melamine into RF precursor mixture solution to obtain nitrogen concentration 2, 6 and 10 wt.%. Material was characterized by elemental analysis, nitrogen adsorption– desorption measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, FT-IR Spectroscopy. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) was used to investigate capacitive and electrocatalytic properties. Conductivity measurement was also performed. Elemental analysis results confirmed presence of nitrogen in CCN samples in the range from 0.45 to 1.15 wt.%. Raman spectroscopy of the samples showed increase of D and G peak integrated intensity ratio (ID/IG) with nitrogen doping suggesting that the structural disorder as well as edge plane density increase, but according to similar ID/IG values for CCN samples, their share is not directly related to the amount of incorporated N. Characterization by nitrogen adsorption showed that overall specific surface and maximum mesopores are achieved in CCN sample with medium nitrogen concentration. Results of cyclic voltammetry experiments demonstrated maximum capacitance for CCN sample with smallest N wt.% indicating that narrow pore size distribution and high specific surface area are dominant factors to achieve good capacitive behavior. The relatively low doping level of nitrogen reached in CCN samples may be the reason for the incomplete reduction of oxygen to hydroxide and furthermore it turned out that presence of N in the structure of CC had a negligible effect on the otherwise relatively high conductivity of CC.