Structure design of mesoporous carbons by blending PEO–PPO–PEO-type and PPO–PEO–PPO-type amphiphilic block copolymers in organic–organic self-assembly

A simple estimation of the molar ratio of hydrophilic and hydrophobic sections (nH/nL) is proposed to predict the final mesostructures of ordered mesoporous carbons, in which the hydrophobic blocks of copolymers contribute the nL value, and hydrophilic sections and water-soluble phenolic resins contribute the nH value. The nH and nL values are adjusted by adding PPO–PEO–PPO-type or PEO–PPO–PEO-type copolymers with low PEO segments content into the PEO–PPO–PEO copolymer with high-content PEO blocks templating synthesis. When the nH/nL value ranges from 127 to 4 and from 403 to 169 by tuning the molar ratio of 25R4(L64)/F127(F108), two-dimensional (2-D) hexagonal and 3-D cubic mesostructures have been successively synthesized. The role of reverse triblock copolymer 25R4 and triblock copolymer L64 molecules in the mesostructure assembling is discussed. Ordered mesoporous carbon products possess high surface areas (495–777 m2/g), large pore volumes (0.32–0.58 cm3/g) and uniform pore sizes (2.5–5.1 nm).