Programmable Pore Engineering of Carbon Nanospheres With Tunable Architectures: Toward Ultra-Efficient Electromagnetic Wave Absorption

Precisely and controllably engineering the pore structure of carbon nanomaterials plays a vital role in achieving desired properties and thereby boosting their performance in diverse fields, while it still remains a huge challenge owing to the remarkable growth of structural complexity. In this study, we successfully explore a quantitative dual-template-mediated co-assembly strategy to accurately achieve continuous structural transition of hierarchical porous carbon nanospheres across a broad scope of pore architecture. Specifically, this simple but powerful strategy can realize meticulous control over the reaction system's co-assembly behaviors and further quantitatively manipulate structural parameters of the derived nanospheres by adjusting the packing parameter p. Impressively, the dynamic structural transformation process of the resultant carbon nanospheres resembles a flower-blossoming process. Under optimal synthesis conditions, the obtained flower-like carbon nanospheres feature a hierarchical pore system composed of micro-/meso-/macropores, high surface-to-volume ratio, abundant active sites, rich heteroatom doping, and fast transfer dynamics, thereby delivering ultra-high electromagnetic wave absorption performance. Our study establishes a customizable and programmable platform for engineering a variety of hierarchical porous nanostructures, unlocking distinctive properties for advanced applications.