A Simple Melt Impregnation Method to Synthesize Ordered Mesoporous Carbon and Carbon Nanofiber Bundles with Graphitized Structure from Pitches

In this paper, we report a simple melt impregnation method by using cheap mesophase pitches (MPs) as carbon precursors to prepare ordered mesoporous carbon with ordered graphitized pore walls at low temperature. This facile procedure includes melting MPs at 140 °C and impregnation of the melt into hexagonal or bicontinuous cubic mesoporous silica templates. After the removal of silica templates by HF solution, ordered mesoporous carbon materials with replica structures of 2-D hexagonal p6mm or cubic Ia3d symmetry were derived. The pore walls of the hexagonal mesoporous carbon products are composed of graphitized domains with the (002) crystallographic plane of the graphite perpendicular to the long axis of the carbon nanorods. Theoretical computations show that negatively charged O atoms of Si−OH and Si−O−Si from the surface of mesoporous silica channels can interact with the positive charged H atoms of the MPs, which makes the stacking units incorporate into the pores with the (002) plane vertical to th...