Synthesis of High‐Surface‐Area Nitrogen‐Doped Porous Carbon Microflowers and Their Efficient Carbon Dioxide Capture Performance

Sustainable carbon materials have received particular attention in CO 2 capture and storage owing to their abundant pore structures and controllable pore parameters. Here, we report high‐surface‐area hierarchically porous N‐doped carbon microflowers, which were assembled from porous nanosheets by a three‐step route: soft‐template‐assisted self‐assembly, thermal decomposition, and KOH activation. The hydrazine hydrate used in our experiment serves as not only a nitrogen source, but also a structure‐directing agent. The activation process was carried out under low (KOH/carbon=2), mild (KOH/carbon=4) and severe (KOH/carbon=6) activation conditions. The mild activated N‐doped carbon microflowers (A‐NCF‐4) have a hierarchically porous structure, high specific surface area (2309 m 2  g −1 ), desirable micropore size below 1 nm, and importantly large micropore volume (0.95 cm 3  g −1 ). The remarkably high CO 2 adsorption capacities of 6.52 and 19.32 mmol g −1 were achieved with this sample at 0 °C (273 K) and two pressures, 1 bar and 20 bar, respectively. Furthermore, this sample also exhibits excellent stability during cyclic operations and good separation selectivity for CO 2 over N 2 .