Improved Ion-Diffusion Performance by Engineering Ordered Mesoporous Shell in Hollow Carbon Nanospheres

Hollow carbon nanospheres are an important class of advanced materials. However, the synthesis of hollow carbon nanospheres with reasonable porous shell structure is still a challenging issue. Herein, a new kind of hollow ordered mesoporous carbon nanospheres (HOMCNSs) is prepared by using a reactive interface-assisted co-assembly approach. The resulting HOMCNSs exhibit a totally new ordered mesoporous shell with a uniform pore size distribution centered at a large value of 3.4 nm, which is different from the traditional hollow carbon nanospheres with non-porous or disordered microporous shell structure. The unique combination of the advantages of both hollow nanospheres and ordered mesopore endows HOMCNSs with promising application prospects in the fields of energy, catalysis and environment that involved with fast ion transport. For example, when used as the electrode material of supercapacitors, HOMCNSs show faster ion diffusion rates, better rate performance and more efficient electrochemically active surface area comparing with the conventional hollow carbon nanospheres with disordered porous shell structure.