Facile synthesis of mesoporous carbon nitrides using the incipient wetness method and the application as hydrogen adsorbent

Highly nitrogen-enriched mesoporous carbon nitride materials with 2-dimensional (2-D) (2D-meso-CN) and 3-dimensional (3-D) mesostructures (3D-meso-CN) were synthesized using mesoporous silica as a hard template and cyanamide as a precursor via the incipient wetness process without using any solvent. The materials were characterized by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for the mesostructure analysis, N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms for surface area and pore size distribution, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy for the composition analysis of frameworks. The mesoporous carbon nitride replicas have graphitic-like stacking of carbon nitride sheets in mesopore walls. The N/C ratio of the mesoporous carbon nitride replicas is 1.13 after the carbonization at 550 °C for 3 h. 2D-meso-CN and 3D-meso-CN have the BET surface area of 361 and 343 m2 g−1, large pore volume of 0.50 and 0.67 cm3 g−1, and pore diameter of 27.8 Å (for 2D-meso-CN), 24.5 and 80.3 Å (for 3D-meso-CN), respectively. It was found that the 3D-meso-CN has higher capacity of hydrogen uptake of 0.25 wt% than the pure mesoporous carbon FDU-15 (0.16 wt%) at 50 bar under room temperature (298 K).