Well-ordered cubic mesoporous carbon with Im3m symmetry

Well-ordered three-dimensional (3D) Im3m-type mesostructured carbon with a cavity size of 4.59 nm has been synthesized using mesoporous SBA-16 silica having a cavity size of 7.91 nm as a hard template, and characterized by means of SAXS, nitrogen adsorption, TGA and TEM techniques. Characterization data indicated that the mesostructured carbon was truly negative replica of mesoporous SBA-16 silica. The carbon replica had a BET surface area of 994 m g and a pore volume of 0.72 cm g . It was identified that surfactant removal methods played an important role in the formation of carbon mesostructures: solvent-extracted SBA-16 produced well-ordered mesoporous carbon materials while calcined SBA-16 gave poorly ordered carbons