Synthetic Architecture of MgO/C Nanocomposite from Hierarchical-Structured Coordination Polymer toward Enhanced CO₂...

Highly efficient, durable, and earth-abundant solid sorbents are of paramount importance for practical carbon capture, storage, and utilization. Here, we report a novel and facile two-step strategy to synthesize a group of hierarchically structured porous MgO/C nanocomposites using flowerlike Mg-containing coordination polymer as a precursor. The new nanocomposites exhibit superb CO₂ capture performance with sorption capacity up to 30.9 wt % (at 27 °C, 1 bar CO₂), fast sorption kinetics, and long cycling life. Importantly, the achieved capacity is >14 times higher than that of commercial MgO, and favorably exceeds the highest value recorded to date for MgO-based sorbents under similar operating conditions. On the basis of the morphological and textural property analysis, together with CO₂ sorption mechanism study using CO₂-TPD and DRIFT techniques, the outstanding performance in CO₂ uptake originates from unique features of this type of sorbent materials, which include hierarchical architecture, porous building blocks of nanosheets, high specific surface area (ca. 300 m²/g), evenly dispersed MgO nanocrystallites (ca. 3 nm) providing abundant active sites, and the in situ generated carbon matrix that acts as a stabilizer to prevent the growth and agglomeration of MgO crystallites. The nanocomposite system developed in this work shows good potential for future low-cost CO₂ abatement and utilization.