Microwave Combustion for Rapidly Synthesizing Pore‐Size‐Controllable Porous Graphene

• Published in: Advanced functional materials Vol. 28; no. 22
• Main Authors: Wan, Jun, Huang, Liang, Wu, Jiabin, Xiong, Liukang, Hu, Zhimi, Yu, Huimin, Li, Tianqi, Zhou, Jun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 30.05.2018
• Subjects: Electric power generation; Energy storage; Graphene; Ion exchange; Materials science; microwave combustion; Nanomaterials; Pore size; Porosity; porous graphene
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201800382

Porous graphene has been widely applied in energy storage, electrocatalysis, photoelectron devices, etc. However, the producing process for porous graphene usually needs long time and is a tedious step. In this work, porous graphene is prepared with controllable pore size by using active metal nanoparticles to catalytically oxidize carbon under microwave combustion process within tens of seconds. The ion exchange membrane based on porous graphene with ≈5 nm pore diameter exhibits a great performance for salinity gradient power generation application with a power density output of ≈1.15 W m−2. This work highlights a new strategy for the design and synthesis of pore‐size‐controllable porous graphene and provides new opportunities for 2D porous nanomaterials. Pore‐size‐controllable porous graphene is rapidly synthesized by utilizing catalytic oxidation combined with microwave combustion. By adjusting the concentration of the precursor and the microwave‐treatment times, the pore size can be easily mediated to ≈5, ≈30, and ≈100 nm. An ion exchange membrane assembled with the porous graphene shows great performance with an output power density of 1.15 W m−2.