MOF-Derived Hierarchically Porous Carbon with Exceptional Porosity and Hydrogen Storage Capacity

Highly porous carbon has played an important role in tackling down the energy and environmental problems due to their attractive features such as high specific surface area (SSA), stability, and mass productivity. Especially, the desirable characteristics of the highly porous carbon such as lightweight, fast adsorption/desorption kinetics, and high SSA have attracted extensive attention in the “hydrogen storage” application which is a main bottleneck for the realization of on-board hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. We herein presented porous carbon with hierarchical pore structure derived from highly crystalline metal organic frameworks (denoted as MOF-derived carbon: MDC) without any carbon source and showed it as a promising hydrogen storage adsorbent. MDCs can be fabricated by a simple heat adjustment of MOFs without complicated process and environmental burden. The MDC displayed hierarchical pore structures with high ultramicroporosity, high SSA, and very high total pore volume. Due to its exceptional porosity, MDCs exhibited reversible H2 storage capacities at certain conditions that were better than those of previously reported porous carbons and MOFs.