Enhanced gas adsorption property of hybrid nanopore-structured copper oxide synthesized from the carbon nanotube/copper composites

Porous metallic oxides have high potential for applications as lightweight functional materials, particularly when they are comprised of structures with high specific surface areas. However, practical use of porous metal oxides is frequently limited because of complicated processing routes coupled with the prevalent limitation of producing high surface-area structures having cross section dimensions beyond the submicrometer range. In this paper, we describe a novel method for creating macroscopic (i.e., >10(3) mm(3)), monolithic structures of nanoporous copper oxide derived from extruded composite bulk precursor forms comprised of Cu and carbon nanotubes using a simple gas-solid reaction during a heating process in air. The final porous copper oxide architecture has a hybrid structure consisting of similar to 500 nm sized macropores, which are separated by ligaments that contain copious quantities of similar to 20 nm sized nanopores. The hybrid structure promotes high surface area, largely due to the generation of similar to 20 nm pores, and furthermore, as a consequence of the interconnected similar to 500 nm pores, facilitates more rapid adsorption rate of permeating gases, as compared to traditional porous metal oxides having a single distribution of nanopores. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3481431]