Ordered Mesoporous Boron Carbon Nitrides with Tunable Mesopore Nanoarchitectonics for Energy Storage and CO2 Adsorption Properties

• Published in: Advanced science 2022-05, Vol.9 (16), p.e2105603-n/a
• Main Authors: Sathish, CI, Kothandam, Gopalakrishnan, Selvarajan, Premkumar, Lei, Zhihao, Lee, Jangmee, Qu, Jiangtao, Al‐Muhtaseb, Ala'a H., Yu, Xiaojiang, Breese, Mark B. H., Zheng, Rongkun, Yi, Jiabao, Vinu, Ajayan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adsorption; Boron; Carbon dioxide; CO2 capture; Energy storage; Graphene; mesoporous; Morphology; Nitrogen; Scanning electron microscopy; sodium‐ion battery; specific capacitance; Spectrum analysis; Sucrose
• ISSN: 2198-3844; 2198-3844
• DOI: 10.1002/advs.202105603

Porous boron carbon nitride (BCN) is one of the exciting systems with unique electrochemical and adsorption properties. However, the synthesis of low‐cost and porous BCN with tunable porosity is challenging, limiting its full potential in a variety of applications. Herein, the preparation of well‐defined mesoporous boron carbon nitride (MBCN) with high specific surface area, tunable pores, and nitrogen contents is demonstrated through a simple integration of chemical polymerization of readily available sucrose and borane ammonia complex (BAC) through the nano‐hard‐templating approach. The bimodal pores are introduced in MBCN by controlling the self‐organization of BAC and sucrose molecules within the nanochannels of the template. It is found that the optimized sample shows a high specific capacitance (296 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1), large specific capacity for sodium‐ion battery (349 mAg h−1 at 50 mAh g−1), and excellent CO2 adsorption capacity (27.14 mmol g−1 at 30 bar). Density functional theory calculations demonstrate that different adsorption sites (BC, BN, CN, and CC) and the large specific surface area strongly support the high adsorption capacity. This finding offers an innovative breakthrough in the design and development of MBCN nanostructures for energy storage and carbon capture applications. A new class of mesoporous boron carbon nitrides exhibiting a rod‐like morphology with well‐defined pores are designed through a simple chemical polymerization and nanotemplating technology that proves its efficiency in multiple applications as energy storage devices and adsorption.