Morphological design of polybenzoxazine by soft templating method

Abstract

Nanoporous material, especially porous carbon can be synthesized via many methods. However, some methods produced a broad pore-size distribution which might not be appropriate for certain application that required selective pore size To overcome this drawback soft- template synthesis method, facile synthesis, has been used. Polybenzoxazine, a new type of phenolic resins that provided properties over conventional novolac and resole type of phenolic resin was used as a carbon precursor to synthesize carbon gel and triblock co- polymer, Pluronic P123, was used as a template. Polybenzoxazine -based carbon xerogel with different properties were obtained by varying different synthesis parameters including solvents, concentrations of polybenzoxazine and concentrations of surfactant, etc. The specific surface area and micropore volume could be improved by varying the concentration of surfactant and optimizing the surfactant concentration to get the highest specific surface area and large micropore volume was achieved. In addition, the condition the condition which the carbon with highest specific surface area was reported after varying pyrolysis temperature and CO₂ at 900 ℃, the specific surface area and micropore volume were about four times higher than that of polybenzoxazine-based carbon xerogel without activation process. The resulting carbon can be classified as microporous carbon and can be used for gas adsorption/separation process