Mesoporous carbon nanomaterials with tunable geometries and porous structures fabricated by a surface-induced assembly strategy

Abstract Mesoporous carbon (MC) nanomaterials have received intensive investigation in the past decades. However, the synthesis of MC with controllable morphologies and porous structures still remains challenging. Herein, we report a surface-induced assembly strategy to construct MC with various geometries and porous structures, using one-dimensional (1D) surface-modified multiwalled carbon nanotubes and two-dimensional (2D) graphene oxide nanosheets as morphological inducers. Positively charged polyaniline (PANI) and silica (SiO2) nanoparticles that serve as carbon source and pore template, respectively, were used to produce SiO2@PANI aggregations in hydrochloric acid media via S+X−I+ assembly pathway, which nucleate and grow on the negatively charged inducer surfaces through electrostatic interaction. MC nanomaterials with precisely tunable dimensions (1D to 2D), diameters (35-210 nm), thicknesses (7-145 nm), and pore sizes (7-22 nm) are successfully fabricated. More importantly, this method can be extended to other morphological inducers that contain negatively charged surfaces, such as Ti3C2Tx. The electrodes based on the MC nanomaterials demonstrate excellent energy storage performance in flexible sulfur electrodes and supercapacitors. Our findings shed light on a new strategy to prepare various MC for energy storage.