General synthesis of discrete mesoporous carbon microspheres through a confined self-assembly process in inverse opals

A general confined coassembly process has been demonstrated to produce discrete uniform mesoporous carbon microspheres with 0.8-1 μm particle size using 3-D-ordered macroporous silica as the template. The obtained mesoporous carbon microspheres (MC-MSs) have uniform and discrete spherical morphology, variable symmetry (hexagonal p6mm or cubic Im3m) of mesostructures, high specific surface areas (500-1100 m²/g), large pore volumes (0.6-2.0 cm³/g), and highly accessible large mesopores (7-10.3 nm). The particle size of the carbon microspheres can be easily tuned by simply using templates with different macropore sizes. It was found that the smaller MC-MSs (330 nm) with higher surface-to-volume ratio tend to shape into an integral monolithic MC-MS matrix and larger MC-MSs (>800 nm) with lower surface-to-volume ratio to discrete spherical morphology. This feature is attributed to the difference in shrinkage behavior of mesoporous carbon spheres confined in the macropores caused by the interaction between the silica wall and carbon microspheres. Adsorption experiments indicate that the cobalt-based nanoparticle-incorporated mesoporous carbon microspheres exhibit excellent size selectivity for protein adsorption in a complex solution and good magnetic separability for easy recycling.