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Ordered nanoporous arrays of carbon supporting high dispersions of platinum nanoparticles

Nature volume 412, pages 169–172 (2001)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 22 November 2001

Abstract

Nanostructured carbon materials are potentially of great technological interest for the development of electronic1,2, catalytic3,4 and hydrogen-storage systems5,6. Here we describe a general strategy for the synthesis of highly ordered, rigid arrays of nanoporous carbon having uniform but tunable diameters (typically 6 nanometres inside and 9 nanometres outside). These structures are formed by using ordered mesoporous silicas as templates, the removal of which leaves a partially ordered graphitic framework. The resulting material supports a high dispersion of platinum nanoparticles, exceeding that of other common microporous carbon materials (such as carbon black, charcoal and activated carbon fibres). The platinum cluster diameter can be controlled to below 3 nanometres, and the high dispersion of these metal clusters gives rise to promising electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction, which could prove to be practically relevant for fuel-cell technologies. These nanomaterials can also be prepared in the form of free-standing films by using ordered silica films as the templates.

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Figure 1: Ordered nanoporous carbon obtained by template synthesis using ordered mesoporous silica SBA-15.
Figure 2: Long-range and short-range order in the structure of ordered nanoporous carbon material.
Figure 3: Transmission electron microscope images of the carbon samples supporting the same amount of platinum as the carbon weight.
Figure 4: Electrocatalytic mass activities of Pt/carbon catalysts for the O2 reduction.

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Acknowledgements

R.R. thanks M. Nomura for helpful discussions on EXAFS measurement. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology through the Creative Research Initiative Program (R.R.), by the School of Molecular Science through the Brain Korea 21 Project (R.R. and J.K.), by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation through the MICROS Center at KAIST (J.K.), and by CREST, Japan Science and Technology Corporation (O.T.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Creative Research Initiative Center for Functional Nanomaterials and Department of Chemistry, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Taejon, 305-701, Korea

    Sang Hoon Joo, Seong Jae Choi & Ryong Ryoo

  2. Department of Chemistry, Electrochemistry Laboratory, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Taejon, 305-701, Korea

    Ilwhan Oh & Juhyoun Kwak

  3. Department of Physics, CREST, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Zheng Liu & Osamu Terasaki

  4. Department of Physics and Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Osamu Terasaki

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  1. Sang Hoon Joo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ryong Ryoo.

Supplementary information

Figure 5

(JPG 11 KB)

Pore size distribution for carbon nanopipe determined by Barrett-Joyner-Halenda analysis of the N2 adsorption isotherm (calculated as described in ref. 15). Inset: N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms

Figure 6

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EXAFS data for Pt/carbon nanopipe. a, k3-weighted EXAFS oscillation [k3c (k)] for 2 wt% Pt/carbon nanopipe in wave vector (k) space. b, Fourier transform of the k3c (k) to distance (r)-space. Solid lines: experimental. Dashed lines: best curve fits obtained with Pt-Pt coordination number of 5.4, bond distance of 0.255 nm and Debye-Waller factor of 106 pm2, with the assumption of face-centered-cubic packing and spherical cluster geometry.

Figure 7

(JPG 3 KB)

Scanning electron microscopic image of carbon nanopipe sample in the form of freestanding thin film. The image was taken by a Philips 535M apparatus operating at 20 kV.

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Joo, S., Choi, S., Oh, I. et al. Ordered nanoporous arrays of carbon supporting high dispersions of platinum nanoparticles. Nature 412, 169–172 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35084046

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