Soft-templating of hard carbons to produce ordered and disordered Hard carbons.

Carbonized biowaste presents a promising route to producing energy materials in a carbonnegative way, given that the precursor material (i.e. plant material) relies on the conversion ofatmospheric CO2 to sugar molecules. By treating cellulose, starch or other sugar molecules athigh temperature (230 oC) and pressure in aqueous solution, an amorphous high carbon materialis formed. This hydrothermal carbon (HTC) can be further modified to produce battery anodes,water purification filters, supercapacitors, fuel cells and catalyst supports. This process yieldanodes with high capacity for sodium ion batteries, but with relatively poor rate capability. This canbe improved by soft templating the carbon material during the HTC process, thereby introducingnew pore structures. here we propose to measure neutron pdf iwth SANS to better understand theatomic and pore structures.