Molecular-Level Regulation of Nitrogen-Doped Ordered Mesoporous Carbon Materials via Ligand Exchange Strategy

Ordered mesoporous carbon materials (OMCMs) are widely used as high-performance electrode materials due to their uniform pore structure, excellent electrical conductivity, and good stability. In this paper, three OMCMs with controllable N content were prepared by a nanocasting method using Fe3O4 nanocrystals as the template and organic ligands as the carbon source. By adopting a ligand exchange strategy, oleic acid, oleic amine, and octyl amine were successfully capped onto the Fe3O4 nanocrystals, respectively, which allowed the rational control of the elemental composition of OMCMs at the molecular level. Further characterizations revealed that the nitrogen content of the resulting OMCMs increased as the proportion of nitrogen atoms in the ligand increased, while the order of the porous structure decreased as the hydrocarbon chain length decreased. This study demonstrates that both the N-doping content and the order of the OMCMs are influenced by the N-containing ligand. This finding will provide a fundamental aspect for their further applications as high-performance electrode and catalytic materials in the field of electrochemistry.