Mesoporous nitrogen-doped carbons from PAN-based molecular bottlebrushes

POLYMER

卷:126

Article

Yuan, Rui¹  Kopec, Maciej¹  Xie, Guojun¹  Gottlieb, Eric¹  Mohin, Jacob W.¹  Wang, Zongyu¹  Lamson, Melissa¹  Kowalewski, Tomasz¹  Matyjaszewski, Krzysztof¹ 

[1] Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Chem, Ctr Macromol Engn, 4400 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA

关键词: Polyacrylonitrile;    Polymer brushes;    Block copolymers;    Oxygen reduction;    Nitrogen-doped carbon;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.polymer.2017.03.040

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Densely grafted brushes with poly(n-butyl acrylate)-block-polyacrylonitrile (PBA-b-PAN) block copolymers (BCPs) as side chains were synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) using a grafting from technique. Owing to the covalent linkage of the arms to the backbone and the resulting strong steric repulsion between the BCP side chains, these bottlebrushes successfully overcame the partial miscibility problem existing in most BCPs at low degrees of polymerization (DP). PBA-b-PAN bottlebrushes were then pyrolyzed to form porous nitrogen-doped carbons using a two-step thermal treatment: first forming intermolecular crosslinks between the PAN blocks, following by decomposition of the PBA to create mesopores. Carbons prepared from brushes with longer PAN blocks exhibited higher surface areas, benefiting from more complete intermolecular crosslinking. Through careful adjustment of side-chain DP, carbons with surface area as high as 420 m(2)/g were obtained. Small mesopores (4-7 nm) with narrow size distributions, as well as significant nitrogen content (6-9 at. %), were observed. The brush-derived, nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon was then deposited as a thin film on a glassy carbon electrode and demonstrated good electrocatalytic activity in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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