Fabrication of monodisperse hollow mesoporous carbon spheres by using "confined nanospace deposition" method for supercapacitor

Hollow mesoporous carbon spheres (HMCSs) have attracted great attention in recent years because of their excellent properties. In this work, we demonstrate an effective method, named "confined nanospace deposition", to prepare uniform HMCSs with large specific surface area by using polystyrene spheres (PSs) as hard templates and carbon precursor and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as a modifying agent coating on the surface of mesoporous silica layer to provide the confined nanospace. During the process of pyrolysis, the gas-phase carbon precursors are derived from PSs decomposition, which are then deposited by the channels of the mesoporous silica shell and simultaneously transform into carbon framework in the presence of catalyst of Fe species in the confined nanospace. The PVP can not only improve the dispersion of HMCSs but also introduce the heteroatom of nitrogen to enhance the wettability of HMCSs as electrode material in the electrolyte. The obtained HMCSs exhibit uniform size, narrow pore size distribution and good electrochemical performances. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.