Revival of Zeolite-Templated Nanocarbon Materials: Recent Advances in Energy Storage and Conversion

Nanocarbon materials represent one of the hottest topics in physics, chemistry, and materials science. Preparation of nanocarbon materials by zeolite templates has been developing for more than 20 years. In recent years, novel structures and properties of zeolite-templated nanocarbons have been evolving and new applications are emerging in the realm of energy storage and conversion. Here, recent progress of zeolite-templated nanocarbons in advanced synthetic techniques, emerging properties, and novel applications is summarized: i) thanks to the diversity of zeolites, the structures of the corresponding nanocarbons are multitudinous; ii) by various synthetic techniques, novel properties of zeolite-templated nanocarbons can be achieved, such as hierarchical porosity, heteroatom doping, and nanoparticle loading capacity; iii) the applications of zeolite-templated nanocarbons are also evolving from traditional gas/vapor adsorption to advanced energy storage techniques including Li-ion batteries, Li-S batteries, fuel cells, metal-O₂ batteries, etc. Finally, a perspective is provided to forecast the future development of zeolite-templated nanocarbon materials.