Aqueous Synthesis of Ordered Mesoporous Carbon via Self-Assembly Catalyzed by Amino Acid

In this manuscript, we demonstrate a synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbon via a self-assembly of resorcinol-formaldehyde polymer and surfactant F127 in aqueous phase in the presence of glutamic acid as the catalyst. It was found that the amounts of glutamic acid and surfactant F127 in the synthesis are important in determining the structural ordering of the resultant mesoporous carbons. The textural parameters of the obtained ordered mesoporous carbon are tunable simply by varying the pyrolysis temperature. The process has the advantage of being a single step self-assembly approach and only involves the use of simple organic precursors and water.