Pore size control of wormholelike mesoporous carbons

A simple and efficient method to tailor the pore size of wormholelike mesoporous carbons (WMCs) has been developed by adding a proper amount of hydrofluoric acid (HF) during the sol-gel process of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS). It was found that the pore size increased obviously from 3.1 to 8.5 nm when increasing HF/TEOS molar ratio from 0 to 1/7. Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area decreased accordingly. In addition, mesopore volume of WMCs basically kept unvaried due to their identical silica template amount.