Facile dual doping strategy via carbonization of covalent organic frameworks to prepare hierarchically porous carbon spheres for membrane capacitive deionization

For the first time, N,B dual-doped porous carbon spheres (denoted as PCSs) were prepared through direct carbonization of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and used as an electrode material for membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI). Due to their high accessible surface area and defect-abundant structure offered by N,B-co-doping, the nanostructured PCSs exhibit high desalination ability and are expected to be promisingly applied in MCDI.