The effect of carbon precursor on the pore size distribution of mesoporous carbon during templating synthesis process

The starch and cyclodextrin were selected as the precursors and the mixture of surfactant and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as template to prepare mesoporous carbon. The result showed that a bimodal pore size distribution in mesoporous carbon derived from starch appeared; one was around 3.4 nm and the other ranged from 3.8 to 16.2 nm. However, there existed a concentrated pore size distribution from 3.2 to 4.2 nm in mesoporous carbon derived from cyclodextrin. The different molecular structure of starch and cyclodextrin and their polymerization process in the presence of sulfur acid were responsible for the resulted mesoporous carbon structure; the starch could polymerize by head to head or side by side, but the cycleodextrin was only polymerized by head to head.