title: Metal-Organic Framework-Templated Porous Carbon for Highly Efficient Catalysis: The Critical Role of Pyrrolic Nitrogen Species.
abstract: Metal-free catalysts are of great importance and alternative candidates to conventional metal-based catalysts for many reactions. Herein, several types of metal-organic frameworks have been exploited as templates/precursors to afford porous carbon materials with various nitrogen dopant forms and contents, degrees of graphitization, porosities, and surface areas. Amongst these materials, the PCN-224-templated porous carbon material optimized by pyrolysis at 700 °C (denoted as PCN-224-700) is composed of amorphous carbon coated with well-defined graphene layers, offering a high surface area, hierarchical pores, and high nitrogen content (mainly, pyrrolic nitrogen species). Remarkably, as a metal-free catalyst, PCN-224-700 exhibits a low activation energy and superior activity to most metallic catalysts in the catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. Theoretical investigations suggest that the content and type of the nitrogen dopant play crucial roles in determining the catalytic performance and that the pyrrolic nitrogen species makes the dominant contribution to this activity, which explains the excellent efficiency of the PCN-224-700 catalyst well.
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors: Gang
authors: G
authors: Huang
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors: Li
authors: L
authors: Yang
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors: Xiao
authors: X
authors: Ma
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China. jianglab@ustc.edu.cn.
authors: Jun
authors: J
authors: Jiang
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors: Shu-Hong
authors: SH
authors: Yu
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China. jiangj1@ustc.edu.cn.
authors: Hai-Long
authors: HL
authors: Jiang
keywords: carbon; doping; metal-free catalysts; metal-organic frameworks; porous materials