Self assembled ordered mesoporous carbon: Synthesis, characterization and applications

Controlled and ordered mesoporosity in carbon-based materials has gained a lots interests and applications in the present technology. Conventionally, ordered mesoporous carbon was nanocasted by doping a suitable inorganic scaffold or template (mostly silica) with an organic carbon precursor followed by carbonization at high temperature. Due to the presence of several associated drawbacks of the nanocasting method, different researchers attempted to insert mesoporosity in carbon based materials without employing any inorganic scaffold. In this so called "soft template" or self-assembly process, an organic block copolymer has been employed as a structure dictating agent and a phenol-formaldehyde type of resin as carbon source held together by hydrogen bonding or occasionally by with an external cross-linking agent. During carbonization, the resin converted to pure carbon where as the copolymer decomposes from the system leaving its contribution as the monitor of the structure of porosity in the resultant carbon. Pluronic P123, Pluronic F127 or polystyrene-block-ploy(4-vinylpyridine) are most common structure dictating copolymers where as phenol, resorcinol or phloroglucinolformaldehyde resins are most widely used as a suitable source of carbon precursors. Literature value revels that these ordered mesoporous carbon possesses the BET specific surface area in the range of 280-1300 m2/g based on the reagents and synthesis procedures. Depending on the processing and aging conditions, the morphology of OMC can be tuned within monolith, fiber or sheets in order to meet the specific demands of the applications.