Rapid Access to Ordered Mesoporous Carbons for Chemical Hydrogen Storage

Funding Information: C.T.Y. acknowledges funds provided by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). E.S.C. acknowledges the support by the International Energy Joint R&D Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP), granted financial resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, Republic of Korea. (No. 20188520000570) and also by National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by Ministry of Science and ICT (2021R1A2C2010017). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbHOrdered mesoporous carbon materials offer robust network of organized pores for energy storage and catalysis applications, but suffer from time-consuming and intricate preparations hindering their widespread use. Here we report a new and rapid synthetic route for a N-doped ordered mesoporous carbon structure through a preferential heating of iron oxide nanoparticles by microwaves. A nanoporous covalent organic polymer is first formed in situ covering the hard templates of assembled nanoparticles, paving the way for a long-range order in a carbonaceous nanocomposite precursor. Upon removal of the template, a well-defined cubic mesoporous carbon structure was revealed. The ordered mesoporous carbon was used in solid state hydrogen storage as a host scaffold for NaAlH4, where remarkable improvement in hydrogen desorption kinetics was observed. The state-of-the-art lowest activation energy of dehydrogenation as a single step was attributed to their ordered pore structure and N-doping effect.Peer reviewe