Preparation of microporous carbons by using α-cyclodextrin as molecular porogen

Abstract This paper reports a novel method for increasing the micropore volume of the microporous carbons (MCs) derived from polyimide by using α-cyclodextrin (CD) as a molecular porogen. The N 2 sorption results showed that the micropore volume of MCs increased from 0.15 to 0.24 cm 3 /g when the CD amount rose from 0% to 15% by weight, whereas the micropore width remained almost constant. The MCs were characterized by XRD, confirming the amorphous structure with two typical broad peaks at a d -spacing of 3.8 A and 2.1 A. Elemental analyses showed that the MCs had a high carbon content of ca. 91%.