Solvent‐Induced Cadmium(II) Metal‐Organic Frameworks with Adjustable Guest‐Evacuated Porosity: Application in the Controllable Assembly of MOF‐Derived Porous Carbon Materials for Supercapacitors

In this work, five new cadmium metal-organic frameworks (Cd-MOFs 1–5) have been synthesized from solvothermal reactions of Cd(NO3)2⋅4 H2O with isophthalic acid and 1,4-bis(imidazol-1-yl)-benzene under different solvent systems of CH3OH, C2H5OH, (CH3)2CHOH, DMF, and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), respectively. Cd-MOF 1 shows a 3D diamondoid framework with 1D rhombic and hexagonal channels, and the porosity is 12.9 %. Cd-MOF 2 exhibits a 2D (4,4) layer with a 1D parallelogram channel and porosity of 23.6 %. Cd-MOF 3 has an 8-connected dense network with the Schafli symbol of [424⋅64] based on the Cd6 cluster. Cd-MOFs 4–5 are isomorphous, and display an absolutely double-bridging 2D (4,4) layer with 1D tetragonal channels and porosities of 29.2 and 28.2 %, which are occupied by DMF and NMP molecules, respectively. Followed by the calcination-thermolysis procedure, Cd-MOFs 1–5 are employed as precursors to prepare MOF-derived porous carbon materials (labeled as PC-me, PC-eth, PC-ipr, PC-dmf and PC-nmp), which have the BET specific surface area of 23, 51, 10, 122, and 96 m2 g−1, respectively. The results demonstrate that the specific surface area of PCs is tuned by the porosity of Cd-MOFs, where the later is highly dependent on the solvent. Thereby, the specific surface area of PCs could be adjusted by the solvent used in the synthese of MOF precusors. Significantly, PCs have been further activated by KOH to obtain activated carbon materials (APCs), which possess even higher specific surface area and larger porosity. After a series of characterization and electrochemical investigations, the APC-dmf electrode exhibits the best porous properties and largest specific capacitances (153 F g−1 at 5 mV s−1 and 156 F g−1 at 0.5 Ag−1). Meanwhile, the APC-dmf electrode shows excellent cycling stability (ca. 84.2 % after 5000 cycles at 1 Ag−1), which can be applied as a suitable electrode material for supercapacitors.