Soft-templating synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons in the presence of tetraethyl orthosilicate and silver salt

Soft-templating synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) in the presence of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and silver nitrate was carried out in order to introduce silver nanoparticles and to create additional microporosity in these materials. This strategy was employed to obtain the phenolic resin-based OMCs with two different loadings of silver. Also, this approach was used to obtain silver-containing mesoporous carbon–silica hybrids, which after dissolving silica with NaOH solution gave microporous–mesoporous carbons with Ag particles. Nitrogen adsorption, small and wide angle X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis showed good adsorption and structural properties of the aforementioned OMC materials.

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► Ag-containing carbons were obtained by soft-templating in the presence of AgNO3.
► Additional microporosity was created by using TEOS-generated silica as hard template.
► Ordered carbon mesostructures were obtained at Ag loading up 20%.