Synthesis of carbon replicas of SBA-1 and SBA-7 mesoporous silicas

Highly ordered mesoporous carbons with symmetry of three-dimensional (3d)-hexagonal P63/mmc   and cubic Pm3¯n have been synthesized by using SBA-7 and SBA-1 silica as templates, respectively. The as-synthesized mesoporous silica templates without surfactant removal were treated by refluxing in boiling acid solution for a desired time, which was demonstrated effective for expanding the apertures and the cages as well, so that the introduction of sucrose solution was significantly improved and the mesostructure of silica template were replicated by carbon. To our best knowledge, it is the first time to report the synthesis of mesoporous carbon with 3d-hexagonal P63/mmc mesostructure.