A new Star(ch) is born: Starbons (R) as biomass-derived mesoporous carbonaceous materials

Porous carbon materials are present in a wide range of technologically important applications, including separation science, heterogeneous catalyst supports, water purification filters, stationary phase materials, as well as the developing future areas of energy generation and storage applications. Hard template routes to ordered mesoporous carbons are well established, but whilst offering different nnesoscopic textural phases, the surface of the material is difficult to chemically post-modify and processing is energy, resource and step intensive. The production of carbon materials from biomass (i.e. sugars or polysaccharides) is a relatively new but rapidly expanding research area. In this manuscript, we describe the preparation, properties and applications of a novel family of polysaccharide-derived nnesoporous carbonaceous materials derived from renewable resources (namely polysaccharides) denoted as Starbons (R).