CVD Nanocasting Routes to Zeolite-Templated Carbons for Hydrogen Storage

We report on a systematic study of CVD-based synthesis strategies for the nanocasting of zeolite-templated porous carbon materials using commercially available zeolite Y as a hard template. Our findings clarify how the properties of the zeolite-templated carbons and their hydrogen storage capacity are affected by (i) the nature of carbon precursor, (ii) the way the carbon precursor is introduced into the zeolite template pores, and (iii) the use of a single step versus two sequential CVD steps. Depending on the synthesis strategy used, the porous carbon materials exhibit variable structural ordering and tunable textural properties with surface area of 850 - 2160 m(2) g(-1) and pore volume of 0.87 - 1.26 cm(3) g(-1). A significant proportion of the porosity, i. e., up to 90% of the surface area and 80% of the pore volume, arises from micropores. The templated carbons exhibit hydrogen-uptake capacity in the range 1.9-4.9 wt.-% (at -196 degrees C and under 20 bar) which is determined by the textural properties, however all the carbon materials have similar hydrogen heat of adsorption of 8.5-9.0 kJ mol(-1) due to their similar carbon framework.