Abstract: Carbon materials exhibit good physiochemical properties and unique microstructure and therefore have applications in diverse fields. One of the traditional method to prepare carbon materials is through carbonization where the organic precursors have been limited to natural products or synthetic polymers. The major drawbacks in these conventional precursors are their poor control over the product composition and microstructure. The more versatile small molecules are scarcely used due to their volatility at the elevated temperatures. Transition metal assisted¹ and alkali metal assisted² carbonization of small molecules have been reported, however, the challenges of post-carbonization metal impurity removal remains. In our group, we have established 1,4-bis(trimethylsilyl)-1,4-dihydropyrazine³ 1 (Figure 1) as a state-of-the-art small molecule precursor for pyrolysis to prepare a N,O-containing carbon material 3 via the formation of a polymeric intermediate 2 upon simple air exposure of 1 at room temperature.⁴ This approach is based on the unique organometallic concept of O₂ activation by organosilicon reagents.⁵ This multi-functionalized carbon material 3 shows outstanding merit as an anode material in Lithium Ion Battery. The detail of this work will be discussed.

Bibliography

1. Z-Y. Wu , S.-L. Xu , Q.-Q. Yan , Z.-Q. Chen , Y.-W. Ding , C. Li , H.-W. Liang and S.-H. Yu , Sci. Adv., 2018, 4, eaat0788.
2. K. Liu , J. Zhang , R. Ding , X. Zheng , T. Yang , C. Wang and M. Chen , Carbon, 2019, 155, 326.
3. H. Tsurugi and K. Mashima , Acc. Chem. Res., 2019, 52, 769.
4. S. S. S. Ali, K. Roy, N. Akula, S. B. Ogale and M. Majumdar, Chem. Commun. 2020, 56, 14805.
5. K. Yamamoto , S. Tanaka , H. Hosoya , H. Tsurugi , K. Mashima and C. Copéret , Helv. Chim. Acta, 2018, 101 , e1800156.