One-pot Synthesis of Functionalized Porous Carbon Using Controlled Fungal Biomass Growth as Soft-template for Cabonization
Abstract
Carbon-based materials are ubiquitous and have a wide range of important applications in renewable energy generation and storage as well as environmental remediation, making them an essential part of a sustainable and renewable DoD infrastructure. For the Navy, the ability customize a carbon support for various applications including tuning catalytic properties is applicable for the power & energy, autonomy and unmanned systems, and platform design and survivability science and technology focus areas. Recent advances in controlling the physiochemical properties of carbon materials at the nanoscale have vastly improved material effectiveness for a variety of fuel cell applications. However, from a practical point of view, high production cost, complexity, and poor reproduction at scale has so far limited widespread adoption of these types of materials. The objective of this project is to design and demonstrate the one-pot fabrication of naturally templated and functionalized porous carbon-nanoparticle materials from renewable and self-assembled fungal mats. Since this project would be developing the carbon support architecture at the source, the incorporation of defined in situ nonprecious metal oxides (which are commonly introduced in a separate production step) could be introduced within fungal growth media formulations which will have significant impact on the catalytic efficiency and production costs for alternative fuel and power application of these materials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141512065
Entities
People
- Jason Ren
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Regents of the University of Colorado
- United States Navy