Starbon: Preparation, applications and transition from laboratory curiosity to scalable product

A number of years ago the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at York discovered new high surface area forms of polysaccharides. Further study of these materials has found that after controlled thermal treatment they exhibit remarkable thermal properties, which have enabled us to make an entirely new class of materials with properties ranging from starch-like to carbon-like (see figure 1). Trademarked Starbon this novel family of mesoporous materials have surface functionalities ranging from hydrophilic to hydrophobic and utilizes the natural ability for polysaccharides to retain their organized structure during pyrolysis. The mesoporous Starbon family now consists of a continuum of materials from a number of different polysaccharides from renewable sources. This technology has been applied to a number of areas such as solid acid/base catalysis, catalyst supports, water purification, and chromatography and has recently been developed into a scalable commercial product.