Porous Carbon Supports: Recent Advances with Various Morphologies and Compositions

The importance of porous carbon as the support material is well recognized in the catalysis community, and it would be even more attractive if several characteristics are considered, such as the stability in acidic and basic media or the ease of noble metal recovery through complete burn off. Because it is still difficult to obtain constant properties even from batch to batch, activated carbons are not popular in industrial catalysis now. During the past decade, the rapid development of nanotechnology has boosted the carbon field, and a number of novel carbons with unique morphologies (such as carbon nanospheres, graphene or sheet-like carbon, and ordered mesoporous carbon) and composites (such as nitrogen-doped carbon and carbon nitride) are emerging, which at the same time greatly benefit heterogeneous catalysis. Metal nanoparticles or metal oxides supported on those carbon supports resulted in interesting and exceptional performances in various catalytic processes, such as selective oxidations, hydrogenations, and oxygen reduction reactions. In this contribution, we review recent progress of porous carbon supports with different morphologies and compositions. Best supporting act: Different strategies for the synthesis of carbon-based nanocatalysts, as well as the benefits that could be realized from the nanostructures are presented, with aim of highlighting their advantages in heterogeneous catalysis and electrocatalysis.