Enlarging the porosity of metal-organic framework-derived carbons for supercapacitor applications by a template-free ethylene glycol etching method

Authors：Xin, Ruijing; Kim, Minjun^*; Cheng, Ping; Ashok, Aditya; Chowdhury, Silvia; Park, Teahoon; Alowasheeir, Azhar; Hossain, Md Shahriar; Tang, Jing; Yi, Jin Woo^*; Yamauchi, Yusuke; Kaneti, Yusuf Valentino^*; Na, Jongbeom^*

Source：Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2023, 11(24): 12759-12769.

DOI：10.1039/d2ta06307g

• POROUS CARBON
• WATER
• CO2
• ELECTRODES
• CHEMISTRY

In this work, hierarchically porous bimetallic zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) particles (etched Zn33Co67-ZIF) exhibiting both micropores and mesopores have been designed and prepared through an ethylene glycol-assisted aqueous etching method. The etching process effectively increases the pore size, surface area, and pore volume of the bimetallic ZIF particles. After the thermal treatment, the etched Zn33Co67-ZIF particles are transformed into cobalt and nitrogen co-doped hierarchically porous carbon (i.e., etched Zn33Co67-C). Etched Zn33Co67-C has an increased mesoporosity, leading to an approximately 45% increase in its specific capacitance compared to the unetched one. In addition, etched Zn33Co67-C displays a higher capacitance retention (67%) than unetched Zn33Co67-C (41%) over a range of scan rates from 1 to 100 mV s(-1). The presented ethylene glycol-assisted aqueous etching process provides a facile template-free strategy to enlarge the porosity of MOFs and their corresponding porous carbons for improving their energy storage performance.

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