Controllable preparation and properties of boron-doped carbon aerogel composites

Carbon aerogels represent a highly promising category of carbon materials with extensive application prospects in insulation, adsorption, catalysis, and battery technologies. Nevertheless, the current preparation techniques, primarily supercritical drying, are hindered by their high costs, time consumption, and complex processes, severely limiting the large-scale industrial production and application of carbon aerogels. This paper utilizes cost-effective phenolic resin as the raw material and employs atmospheric drying, a method more suited to scalable production, to prepare carbon aerogels. Furthermore, it examines the impact of boric acid doping on enhancing the thermal and electrochemical properties of carbon aerogels. The introduction of boric acid leads to the formation of B-O bonds within the carbon aerogel matrix, thus improving thermal stability and increasing the carbon yield to 63.5% at 1000 degrees C, a 5.5% enhancement compared to aerogels synthesized without boric acid. Comprehensive electrochemical evaluations of aerogels with varying boric acid contents highlighted the superior performance of boronic acid-doped carbon aerogels (BCA)-0.5, achieving a specific capacitance of 338.93 F g-1 at a current density of 2 A g-1. In conclusion, doping carbon aerogels with boric acid enhances their thermal stability and significantly improves their electrochemical functionality, making BCA-0.5 a leading material for advanced supercapacitor technologies. This research provides a blueprint for the development of superior carbon aerogels and serves as a valuable reference for future studies on carbon aerogels.