Dopamine Assisted One-Step Pyrolysis of Glucose for the Preparation of Porous Carbon with A High Surface Area

Herein, a facile dopamine assisted one-pot synthesis approach is proposed for the preparation of porous carbon with a specific surface area (SSA) up to 2593 m2/g through the direct pyrolysis of a mixture of glucose, NH4Cl, and dopamine hydrochloride (DAH). The glucose is adopted as the carbon source and foaming agent, NH4Cl is used as the blowing agent, and DAH is served as collaborative carbon precursor as well as the nitrogen source for the first time. The effect of dopamine on the component, structure, and SSA of the as-prepared porous carbon materials are systematically studied. The moderate addition of dopamine, which influences the condensation and polymerization of glucose, matches better with ammonium salt decomposition. The SSA of porous carbon increases first and then decreases with the increasing amount of dopamine. In our case, the porous carbon produced with 5 wt% dopamine (PC-5) achieves the maximum SSA of up to 2593 m2/g. Accordingly, it also shows the greatest electrochemical performance. The PC-5 shows a capacitance of 96.7 F/g calculated from the discharge curve at 1 A/g. It also has a good capacitive rate capacity, the specific capacitance can still maintain 80%, even at a high current density of 10 A/g. Moreover, PC-5 exhibits a good cycling stability of 98.1% capacitive retention after 1000 cycles. The proposed method may show promising prospects for preparing porous carbon materials as advanced energy storage materials, storage, and catalyst supports.