Nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon electrodes prepared from templating propylamine-functionalized silica

In this paper, nitrogen doped carbon materials with mesopores 4–8 nm-wide and a high surface area of ca.1100 m2 g- 1 were synthesized according to an innovative hard template method. Sucrose was used as carbon source and propylamine functionalized silica acted as both nitrogen source and templating agent. The novel doped carbons were compared with mesoporous carbons featuring similar texture properties (pore size and surface area) but obtained by the pyrolysis of sucrose or 1,10-phenantholine and employing non-functionalized silica as a templating agent. The interest of this investigation is to understand how doping occurs when a functionalized silica is employed, and whether the nitrogen doping remains a surface property or it is extended also to the bulk of the material, influencing the morphological and the electrical properties of the resulting carbon. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and EDX confirmed the doping action of the functionalized silica and the electrochemical characterization allowed to compare the different performances as supercapacitor materials.