Oct 25 2022Reviewed by Mila Perera
Small carbon-based structures are a practical and adaptable instrument that can be applied in a variety of fields, such as energy storage, gas and oil, water and wastewater treatment.
This graphic shows how small organic molecules can be transformed into organic molecular salts, or ionic solids. The organic molecular salts can then be transformed into porous carbons through pyrolysis, which uses high temperatures to activate a transformation. Porous carbons are essential for creating carbon nanostructures, which can be used in a variety of industries. Image Credit: Tsinghua University PressSynthetic and natural polymers have typically been utilized as a starting point to begin the chemical reaction required to build the nanostructured carbons. It is known as a precursor. Both organic and synthetic polymers, however, have drawbacks. Due to their complexity, natural polymers make precision difficult, while the production of synthetic polymers is both challenging and expensive.
Recent studies have shown that small organic molecules can be heated to transform them into organic metal salts, which can subsequently be converted into porous carbons as an alternative to polymer precursors. Pyrolysis is the procedure of heating the molecules to produce a new material.
On October 22nd, 2022, the research was published in Nano Research.
The direct purpose of using small molecules as precursors is to simplify carbon preparation by avoiding the polymerization process. More importantly, this concept of using small molecules can greatly expand the structural diversity of precursors for carbon preparation and thus could pave a pathway to study the relationship between carbon material properties and precursor structures.
Hai-Wei Liang, Professor and Researcher, University of Science and Technology of China
Related StoriesUsing UV Absorption Spectroscopy to Analyze ssDNA-Coated CNTsElectronic Applications for Organic Processing BindersPCBM from Aldrich Materials SciencePrevious research into small organic molecules as an alternative to polymer precursors was limited as a result of synthesis conditions, which created small molecules that were more volatile.
This investigation expands on earlier work that suggested that some of these restrictions could be overcome by employing ionic liquids, a salt in a liquid state.
The researchers advanced this concept by using organic metal salts, commonly known as ionic solids, rather than ionic liquids since they include organic and inorganic components.
The organic metal salts can form templates for the carbon nanostructures with the help of this mixture of organic and inorganic elements. The study also demonstrates that various small organic compounds can be employed as precursors, provided they have acidic groups that can transform into salt.
The difficulty of using small molecules for carbon preparation mainly comes from their high volatility, which can be easily overcome by the transformation of small molecules into organic metal salts. This is because the original weak intermolecular force holding molecules together is replaced by robust electrostatic force after the salt formation, thus lowering the volatility.
Hai-Wei Liang, Professor and Researcher, University of Science and Technology of China
The versatility of the organic metal salts is another advantage of this approach. The molecular properties of the carbon nanostructures can be regulated by changing the components of the organic metal salts.
In the future, researchers will keep investigating the various applications of this method.
Next, we will continue to explore the structural relationship between carbon materials and molecular precursors to establish well-defined rules to guide the rational synthesis of carbon materials at the molecular level. Ultimately, we hope to use the advantage of this method in controlling carbon structures and compositions to achieve the tailor-made synthesis of advanced functional carbon materials for targeted applications.
Hai-Wei Liang, Professor and Researcher, University of Science and Technology of China
Lei Tong and Liangdong Fan from the College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Shenzhen University, along with Qian-Qian Yang, Shuai Li, Le-Le Zhang, Wei-Jie Zeng, and Yan-Wei Ding from the Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of China, are the additional authors.
The Shenzhen Government’s Plan of Science and Technology, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the Joint Funds from Hefei National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, the National Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, the Research Grant for Scientific Platform and Project of Guangdong Provincial Education Office, and the Collaborative Innovation Program of Hefei Science Center of CAS helped the research.
Journal Reference
Tong, L., et al. (2022) Building the bridge of small organic molecules to porous carbons via ionic solid principle. Nano Research. doi:10.1007/s12274-022-4997-8.
Source: http://www.tup.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/index.html
