Abstract
Nitrogen-containing carbon aerogel was prepared from resorcinol–melamine–formaldehyde (R–M–F) polymer gel precursor. The polymer gel was supercritically dried with CO2, and the carbonization of the resulting polymer aerogel under nitrogen atmosphere at 900 °C yielded the carbon aerogel. The polymer and carbon aerogels were characterized with TG/DTA–MS, low-temperature nitrogen adsorption/desorption (− 196 °C), FTIR, Raman, powder XRD and SEM–EDX techniques. The thermal decomposition of the polymer aerogel had two major steps. The first step was at 150 °C, where the unreacted monomers and the residual solvent were released, and the second one at 300 °C, where the species belonging to the polymer network decomposition could be detected. The pyrolytic conversion of the polymer aerogel was successful, as 0.89 at.% nitrogen was retained in the carbon matrix. The nitrogen-doped carbon aerogel was amorphous and possessed a hierarchical porous structure. It had a significant specific surface area (890 m2 g−1) and pore volume (4.7 cm3 g−1). TG/DTA–MS measurement revealed that during storage in ambient conditions surface functional groups formed, which were released upon annealing.
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Acknowledgements
I. M. Szilágyi thanks for a János Bolyai Research Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and an ÚNKP-17-4-IV-BME-188 grant supported by the ÚNKP-17-4-IV New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities, Hungary. The research within Project No. VEKOP-2.3.2-16-2017-00013 was supported by the European Union and the State of Hungary, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. An OTKA 109558 grant, an NRDI K 124212 grant and an NRDI TNN_16 123631 grant are acknowledged. The authors are grateful to Mr. György Bosznai for the technical assistance.
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Bakos, L.P., Mensah, J., László, K. et al. Preparation and characterization of a nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon aerogel and its polymer precursor. J Therm Anal Calorim 134, 933–939 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-018-7318-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-018-7318-4