(395f) Development of Polymer-Templated Phenolic Resin-Based Carbons with Ultra Large Mesopores for Adsorption of Biomolecules

Mesoporous carbons (MCs) with high surface area, large pore volume, and high thermal, chemical and mechanical stability have received considerable attention because of their potential applications in separations, catalysis, gas and energy storage. For instance, carbons with large mesopores and high surface area are attractive for various applications including adsorption of large molecules such as vitamins, dyes, humic acids, etc. Although the hard-templating strategy is often used for the synthesis of carbons with large pores, it is less suitable for scaling up due to multi-step process and cost. An alternative and feasible strategy is the soft templating, which is reported here. This strategy has been successfully employed to obtain ultra-large mesoporous carbons (UMC) by using the evaporation-induced self assembly (EISA) in the presence of poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(butylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) triblock copolymer (EO₃₈-BO₄₆-EO₃₈; Vorasurf 504) as a soft template. Resorcinol and formaldehyde were used as carbon precursors, whereas trimethyl benzene (TMB) was used as a micelle expander. N₂ adsorption isotherms reveal that the TMB-assisted synthesis of UMC resulted in carbons with large mesopores and relatively narrow pore size distribution (PSD) centered at about 27 nm. Carbons synthesized without TMB had also fairly large mesopores at the mean value of ~18 nm. Adsorption of lysozyme on the UMC materials was measured from buffered solution at pH = 10.8 and analyzed by using Langmuir adsorption isotherm equation. The maximum adsorption of lysozyme (= 31.0 μmol/g) was observed for the carbon sample obtained in the presence of TMB at 600^oC.