Phytic acid-induced self-assembled chitosan gel-derived N, P–co-doped porous carbon for high-performance CO₂ capture and supercapacitor

Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials (HPCMs) have attracted great attention due to their excellent physical and chemical properties and the enhanced performance of multiple heteroatom co-doping. Herein, N, P-co-doped porous carbon materials (NPPCs) are developed via a novel synthesis of the phytic acid-induced self-assembled chitosan aerogel followed by pyrolysis and activation. Phytic acid serves as a P source, acid regulator and structure-directing agent for improved activation efficiency to create more pores. A little of NaNO₃ is used both as a template and activator simultaneously. The porosity and N content of such NPPCs are controlled by rationally tuning the pyrolysis temperature and the mount of NaNO₃. The NPPC-0.75-600 delivers a good CO₂ adsorption capability of 3.02 and 5.31 mmol g⁻¹ at 100 and 500 kPa, respectively, and has an excellent stability with almost no adsorption capacity decay even after successive 20 cycles. For supercapacitors (SCs), the NPPC-0.75-700 also displays a high capacitance of 231.2 F g⁻¹ at 1 A g⁻¹ and an outstanding stability at circa 96.7% initial capacity after 10000 cycles. These results highlight the great potential of such NPPCs in CO₂ capture and SCs, and the novel synthetical route offers new insights for the readily scalable production of HPCMs.