Cysteine-Assisted Tailoring of Adsorption Properties and Particle Size of Polymer and Carbon Spheres

A series of cysteine-stabilized phenolic resin-based polymer and carbon spheres were prepared by the modified Stöber method. Cysteine plays a very important role in the proposed one-pot synthesis of the aforementioned spheres; namely, it acts as a particle stabilizer and a source of heteroatoms (nitrogen and sulfur) that can be introduced into these spheres. The diameter of these spheres can be tuned in the range of 70–610 nm by adjusting the cysteine amount and reaction temperature. Since polymer spheres obtained in the presence of cysteine contain sulfur and nitrogen heteroatoms, they were tested for adsorption of copper ions. It is shown that adsorption isotherms recorded for copper ions can be well fitted by Langmuir equation, giving unprecedented adsorption capacities up to ∼65 mg/g

Graphitic Mesoporous Carbons with Embedded Prussian Blue-Derived Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Synthesized by Soft Templating and Low-Temperature Graphitization

A series of highly graphitized mesoporous carbons was synthesized by self-assembly of polymeric carbon precursors and block copolymer template in the presence of poly­(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP)-coated Prussian blue (PB) nanoparticles used as a graphitization catalyst. Resorcinol and formaldehyde were used as carbon precursors, poly­(ethylene oxide)–poly­(propylene oxide)–poly­(ethylene oxide) triblock copolymer (Pluronic F127) was employed as a soft template. The carbon precursors were polymerized in hydrophilic domains of block copolymer along with PVP-coated PB nanoparticles, followed by carbonization. This recipe gave carbons with cylindrical mesopores created by thermal decomposition of the soft template, and with PB-derived iron oxide nanoparticles. In addition, the presence of iron species catalyzed graphitization at relatively low temperature. The XRD and TEM measurements revealed that the resulting carbons obtained with smaller amounts of PB exhibited ordered mesostructures with relatively high degree of graphitization; however, exceedingly graphitic carbons with disordered mesopores were obtained with higher amounts of PB. Furthermore, wide-angle XRD measurements and TGA analysis provided evidence that graphitization took place at 600 °C, which is considered to be a very low temperature for the graphitization process. N₂ adsorption and TGA analysis showed that the aforementioned carbons exhibited high surface area (reaching 621 m²/g) and an extremely high percentage of graphitic domains (approaching 87%). Interestingly, the carbon prepared with larger amount of PB showed magnetic properties. Electrochemical measurements performed on these carbons for double layer capacitors showed somewhat rectangular shape of cyclic voltammetry (CV) curves with a large capacitance of 211 F/g in 1 M H₂SO₄ electrolyte