Ten Years of Research on Ordered Mesoporous Carbons: Major Advances in Synthesis, Properties and Potential Applications

About ten years ago Ryoo and co-workers [1,2] reported the hard-templating (HT) synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) by using ordered mesoporous silicas (OMSs) as hard templates. Five years afterward the soft-templating (ST) synthesis of OMCs has been discovered [3-6]. Significant progress has been made in both hardand soft-templating synthesis of OMCs [7-10]. Major advances in the synthesis of these fascinating materials, their properties and potential applications are briefly presented. The current efforts are focused on the development of carbons with hierarchical porous structures as well as carbon-based hybrid materials with incorporated inorganic and organic species for adsorption, catalytic, environmental and energy-related applications. The HT synthesis (see Fig. 1) includes infiltration of pores of a hard template (usually OMS or colloidal silica) with carbon precursors (e.g., sucrose, polymers) followed by carbonization and template removal with HF or NaOH solutions [2,11-13]. Depending on the template used the resulting inverse carbon replicas possess disordered or ordered porosity. OMCs are obtained by using OMSs or colloidal silica crystals as hard templates. The use of colloidal silica in the HT synthesis affords disordered carbons with uniform spherical mesopores.