Heteroatom-doped carbon materials have demonstrated great potential in the electrochemical reduction reaction of CO2 (CO2RR) due to their versatile structure and function. However, rational structure control remains one challenge. In this work, we reported a unique carbon precursor of soft template-containing porous poly(ionic liquid) (PIL) that was directly synthesized via free-radical self-polymerization of ionic liquid monomer in a soft template route. Variation of the carbonization temperature in a direct pyrolysis process without any additive yielded a series of carbon materials with facile adjustable textural properties and N species. Significantly, the integration of soft-template in the PIL precursor led to the formation of hierarchical porous carbon material with a higher surface area and larger pore size than that from the template-free precursor. In CO2RR to CO, the champion catalyst gave a Faraday efficiency of 83.0% and a current density of 1.79 mA∙cm−2 at −0.9 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (vs. RHE). The abundant graphite N species and hierarchical pore structure, especially the unique hierarchical small-/ultra-micropores were revealed to enable better CO2RR performance.
Citation
Sun, M., Bian, Z., Cui, W., Zhao, X., Dong, S., Ke, X., Zhou, Y., & Wang, J. (2022). Pyrolyzing soft template-containing poly(ionic liquid) into hierarchical N-doped porous carbon for electroreduction of carbon dioxide. Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, 43, 192-201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjche.2021.07.020
