Nitrogen-doped porous carbon monolith as a highly efficient catalyst for CO2 conversion

Abstract

In this work, we report an N-doped porous carbon monolith used for the first time as a catalyst for the cycloaddition of CO₂ to cyclic carbonates. It acts as an efficient, single-component, metal-, solvent- and halogen-free catalyst for the formation of chloropropene carbonate from CO₂ and epichlorohydrin. The N-doped carbon monolith AA-950 significantly exhibited a high CO₂ capture capacity of 16.20 mmol g⁻¹ (298 K and 20 bar) and high conversion of epoxides. A catalytic mechanism has also been proposed based on the basis of DFT calculations. Our findings may trigger interest in the studies of carbon materials for CO₂ capture and conversion performance.