Mesoporous Carbon Materials with Functional Compositions

Since the 1990s, there has been rapidly expanding development of solid materials with mesoporous structure, of which mesoporous carbons are an important family. Toward the design of functional materials, mesoporous carbons with various compositions have been prepared for specific uses, such as catalysts, adsorbents, and electrode materials. Some of those novel materials indeed show promising performance in several fields, such as nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon for oxygen reduction reactions in fuel cells and mesoporous carbon nitride for photocatalysis. This Minireview summarizes recent advances in the design, synthesis, characterization, and application of mesoporous carbons with functional compositions and briefly discusses next-generation mesoporous carbons.