Synthesis And Modification Of Highly Ordered Three Dimensionally Macroporous Carbon Spheres And Their Catalytic Properties

In recent years, ordered porous carbon nanomaterials received much attention dueto their ordered pores, tailorable textural properties, large surface area, highconductivities and excellent physical property. These outstanding structural propertiesmake porous carbon materials exhibit potential applications in catalysis，optics，electrics，magnetism，nanotechnology, and sensors, eta. With the development ofapplication of porous carbon nanomaterials, numerous porous nanomaterials withdifferent pore sizes and pore shapes have been prepared, which become a hot topic ofthe present carbon materials. However, there are lots of shortages and unknownremaining to explore and solve, for example, how to shape the porous carbon and howto control the pore and size of porous carbon. Preparing and applications of orderedthree dimensionally uniformed porous carbon materials with regular configuration arestill a opportunity and challenge, which need a lot of work to do. In this paper, highlyordered three dimensionally macroporous carbon spheres (MPCS) were successfullyprepared against removable colloidal silica crystal bead templates by carbonization ofglucose. The unique structural characteristics of the well-developed three dimensionallyinterconnected macropores were characterized by X-ray diffraction scanning (XRD),nitrogen adsorption, electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy(TEM). The3DMPCS have diameter about50μm and the size of uniform large porestructures composing of MPCS is about250nm.MPCS were used as catalyst support and Pt nanoparticles were supported on thethree dimensionally interconnected macropores. It was found that the MPCS supportedPt exhibited high electrocatalytic activity for methanol oxidation.MPCS were covalently modified by cysteine (MPCS-CO-Cys). High sensitivitywas exhibited when this material was used as electrode material in electrochemical detection (square wave anodic stripping voltammetry) of heavy metal ions.Simultaneous detection of heavy metal ions was also investigated. All these show thatMPCS-CO-Cys were a god-given material for rapidly detecting heavy metal ions withhigh accuracy.Highly ordered three dimensional macroporous carbon spheres bearing sulfonicacid groups (MPCS-SO3H) were prepared by incomplete carbonization of glucose insilica crystal bead template at low temperature, followed by sulfonation and removal ofthe template. The catalytic properties of the MPCS-SO3H were evaluated byesterification of ethanol with acetic acid, indicating that MPCS-SO3H possessremarkable catalytic performance (high stability and acid catalytic ability) for theesterification.