Ordered mesoporous carbon nanoparticles with well-controlled morphologies from sphere to rod via a soft-template route

A facile soft-template method is used to synthesize highly ordered mesoporous carbon nanoparticles (MCNs) with well-controlled morphology from spherical to rod-like structures. Low-molecular-weight phenolic resol is used as carbon-yielding component and triblock copolymer Pluronic F127 as pore-forming component. The morphology of nanoparticles could be tuned by well controlling the concentration of F127. The results show that rod-shaped and worm-like mesoporous carbon nanoparticles can be obtained when the concentration of F127 is set at ∼12 wt.% and 9 wt.%, respectively. The spherical nanoparticles are obtained when the concentration is reduced to 6 wt.%, and their size can be adjusted by further decreasing the F127 concentration. Moreover, the highly ordered mesostructure can be readily turned from 2D hexagonal (p6m  ) to 3D caged cubic (Im3¯m) along with the tuning of morphologies from rod-shaped to spherical. The as-obtained MCNs exhibit large surface area (∼1385 m2/g), high pore volume (∼0.919 cm3/g), highly ordered mesostructure, and continuous electron transport framework. Hence, the obtained mesoporous carbon materials show excellent capacitance (∼142 F/g at loading current density of 0.5 A/g) in the application of supercapacitors.

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► The morphology of MCNs could be tuned by controlling template concentration.
► Highly ordered mesostructure was achieved in the prepared MCNs.
► MCNs exhibited large surface area and excellent electrochemical properties.