Carbon and Metal-Doped Carbon Aerogels for Hydrogen Storage

The carbon aerogels (CAs) materials used in scientific research, both the undoped and the metal-doped, were synthesized via the sol-gel polymerization of resorcinol and formaldehyde in aqueous solution to produce organic gels which were ambient dried and subsequently pyrolyzed in nitrogen atmosphere at 1 050 ℃. The undoped carbon aerogels were activated with CO₂ in order to modify their structure properties, such as porosity, surface area, and the pore size distribution. The largest surface area obtained is 2 582 m²/g for the activated carbon aerogels. The resulted materials were characterized by means of nitrogen adsorption, scanning electron microscopy, transmissionelectron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. In addition, an increase in the surface area and micropore volume for the Pddoped carbon aerogels were noted.