N-doped microporous carbon hollow spheres with precisely controlled architectures for supercapacitor

Abstract In the past decades, much effort has been denoted on the synthesis of porous hollow carbon spheres for many applications. However, the research for the precisely control of structure remains insufficient. Herein, nitrogen-doped microporous carbon hollow spheres with controllable architectures were synthesized with a facile one-pot synthetic route. Ethylenediamine (EDA) acts as a base catalyst for the condensation procedure and as a nitrogen precursor as well. Tetrapropyl orthosilicate (TPOS) and resorcinol/formaldehyde (RF) were used as the silica and carbon precursors, respectively. By the control of the EDA addition, the molar ratio of TPOS/tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and volume ratio of ethanol/DI water, the particles showed high surface area, large pore volume, good nitrogen content, precisely controllable pore size, shell thickness, diameter of cavity. In addition, the materials exhibited excellent properties for supercapacitor. We believe that the precisely controllable architectures of the N-doped microporous carbon hollow spheres in this method offers great opportunities for designing synthesis.