Mesoporous and crystalline carbide-derived carbons: Towards a general correlation on synthesis temperature and precursor structure influence

Abstract Carbide-derived carbons (CDCs) comprise a promising group of porous carbons and already proofed to be excellent model materials due to their remarkable tuneability of pore structure and crystallinity via choice of synthesis parameters. Most studies focused on microporous, high surface area materials and mainly amorphous materials at synthesis temperatures up to 1200 °C. While studies showed for TiC that higher temperatures may lead to more crystalline and mesoporous structures, which are highly attractive for electrochemical applications, these regime and CDC materials are only rarely studied. Thus, it stays an open question how the interplay of carbide precursor and temperature above 1200 °C influence the resulting carbon structure. Therefore, this work investigated the structure of CDCs synthesized at high temperatures (800–1600 °C) from six different carbides (NbC, SiC, TaC, TiC, VC, ZrC). Accordingly, for rock salt type carbides with carbon to carbon distances above 0.334 nm a direct correlation between carbide precursor structure and resulting carbon structure could be found, while for SiC with a hexagonal close-packed structure and carbon to carbon distance below 0.334 nm more crystalline and mesoporous structures only result at temperatures above 1600 °C. The raw characterization data is provided through an open access repository.