Copper oxide activation of soft-templated mesoporous carbons and their electrochemical properties for capacitors

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous carbon with a 2-D hexagonal mesostructure was prepared by an organic–organic co-assembly method. The mesoporous carbon was activated by using CuO to improve its mesoporosity. Compared with pristine mesoporous carbon (PMC-900) carbonized at 900 °C, the mean mesopore size of the activated mesoporous carbon (AMC-900) is increased from 3.2 to 5.5 nm by an etching reaction between copper oxide and the inner layer of the carbonaceous mesochannels. Mass spectrometry profiles confirm that dehydrogenation and oxidation reactions happened during the CuO activation process. The total pore volume of AMC-900 is increased from 0.48 to 1.06 cm³ g⁻¹ and the specific surface area increased from 827 to 1084 m² g⁻¹ after the CuO activation. Compared with the common activation processes, the simple CuO reduction method is a more effective pathway for the production of ordered porous carbons with large mesopores. AMC-900 shows good rate capability and typical rectangular-shaped cyclic voltammetry curves over a range of scan rates from 5 to 200 mV s⁻¹, with a large specific capacitance of 7.2 μF cm⁻² in organic (1.0 M tetraethyl ammonium tetrafluoroborate/polypropylene carbonate) electrolyte solutions.