Fabrication of nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbons through a hybrid dual-template route for CO2 capture and haemoperfusion

Hierarchically porous carbon materials have many important technological applications; however, most of them were fabricated using either expensive materials or complicated procedures. Based on a general chelate-assisted multi-component co-assembly strategy, nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbon materials were fabricated by using Al-based composite and commercial triblock copolymer Pluronic F127 as co-templates, and natural banana peel as precursor. This versatile strategy allowed to easily achieve tunable surface area (700–2100 m2 g−1), pore volume (0.38–1.65 cm3 g−1) and a narrow average mesoporous size of ca. 2.72–4.03 nm by simply varying the dosages of Al3+ and F127, and to attain high N content (4.54 wt%) in a large-scale fabrication system (2 L). X-ray photoelectron spectroscope characterization of the as-prepared sample revealed nitrogen atoms are mainly in the form of pyridinic nitrogen, quaternary nitrogen and pyridine-N-oxide. Importantly, these as-obtained carbon materials showed excellent performance in CO2 capture and bilirubin removal with high adsorption capacities and selectivities. The present fabrication strategy is also applicable to the design of porous carbons doped with other elements by choosing appropriate biomass precursors.