A facile method of synthesizing uniform resin colloidal and microporous carbon spheres with high nitrogen content

• We report a facile method for synthesizing resin spheres and carbon spheres.
• Carbon spheres feature high nitrogen contents and high specific surface area.
• The size and uniformity of particles can be well regulated.

3-Aminophenol/formaldehyde (AF) resin colloidal spheres with narrow size distribution and high nitrogen content are synthesized in the presence of urea. The obtained particles that indicated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) are spherical morphology and uniform. It can be further carbonized into carbon spheres preserving high nitrogen percent. The particle size is tunable from 300 nm to 850 nm by appropriately varying the concentration of precursor or water/ethanol volume ratio. Even using the water as an only solvent, we can also obtain spherical particles with different size. Typically, the nitrogen percent in the obtained polymer and carbon particles is as high as 10.39 wt% and 8.95 wt%, respectively. The typical surface area of resulted carbon particles obtained from nitrogen adsorption measurement is 459 m2 g−1. X-ray diffraction demonstrates the obtained carbon spheres are amorphous, which are expected to have practical application in the field of energy devices. The method can be considered as a low cost and facile method for mass production.

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