Ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) is promising for various applications including sorbents, energy storage, and CO<sub>2</sub> capture due to their distinct advantages compared to traditional microporous carbon materials. These advantages include synthetic flexibility in tuning the pore size and matrix chemistry, uniform pore structures with excellent accessibility, and enhanced mass transport and diffusion within the pore channels. In general, OMCs are most commonly produced through templating-based methods using surfactants/block copolymers as templates, combined with multi-step processes such as evaporation-induced self-assembly. To fully enable the practical use of OMCs, their fabrication methods must be improved to include simplified and scaled processes, as well as lower cost material selections. This talk will present a novel 2-step process for synthesizing large-pore OMCs using block copolymers as precursors. After thermal stabilization and carbonization, the matrix can be converted to carbons while the minority domains are decomposed to create pores. We found our OMCs can exhibit high surface areas (~1400 m<sup>2</sup>/g) and pore sizes that can be easily tuned from 10 nm to 30 nm by manipulating reaction conditions with identical precursor selection. We believe our method can provide an alternative solution for OMC synthesis, which might be beneficial for their scaled production in industry.

Synthesis of large-pore ordered mesoporous carbon through direct pyrolysis of copolymers

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.