Cost is one of the first questions our customers ask when evaluating mesoporous carbon for their applications. The answer usually depends on order quantity and product specifications. Here, I’ll try to do my best to outline the key factors that affect mesoporous carbon cost.
Mesoporous carbon refers to carbon materials with pore sizes in the 2–50 nm range. These materials have attracted significant interest due to their tunable pore structures and high surface areas. As a result, mesoporous carbons are widely explored in batteries, fuel cells, catalysis, adsorption, drug delivery, and other electrochemical and environmental applications.
The price of mesoporous carbon varies widely, and I’ll discuss some of the main cost drivers, which are pore structure (ordered vs. disordered), purity, surface area, surface functionalization and production scale.
Ordered vs. Disordered Mesoporous Carbon
Ordered mesoporous carbons are typically produced using templating approaches, including hard templates and soft templates. Common hard templates include mesoporous silica, colloidal silica, and metal oxide nanoparticles, while soft templating methods usually involve surfactants or block copolymers.
Producing long-range ordered pore structures is inherently more complex, and therefore ordered mesoporous carbons generally have higher production costs. For example, CMK-3 and CMK-8, which are synthesized using mesoporous silica templates (e.g., SBA-15), often cost over $200 per gram at lab scale, largely due to the high cost of mesoporous silica templates and the multi-step synthesis and template removal processes. For this reason, this approach has not been widely scaled for industrial production.
Ordered mesoporous carbons produced using MgO hard templates have been commercialized. By varying the size of the MgO templates, manufacturers can produce mesoporous carbons with pore sizes in the 5–50 nm range, narrow pore size distributions, and high surface areas. However, due to the high cost of highly crystalline MgO nanoparticles and the associated processing steps, MgO-templated mesoporous carbons are typically priced at tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram.
Colloidal silica represents a more economical templating option than mesoporous silica or MgO. Similar to MgO templating, varying silica nanoparticle size allows control over pore size distribution and enables the production of carbons with pore sizes ranging from 2–50 nm, as well as mixed porosity structures. Momentum Materials’ NCP Supports™ are based on colloidal silica templates. Using this approach, we are also able to produce NCP with mixed pore structures, including materials containing both mesopores and macropores (>50 nm). Because the cost of commercial colloidal silica is substantially lower than that of MgO templates, the cost of NCP is approximately 50% of MgO-templated mesoporous carbon.
Compared with hard templating approaches, soft templating methods face challenges in precisely controlling pore size during large-scale production. While some start-up companies are working toward commercializing soft-templated ordered mesoporous carbons, large-scale mass production has not yet been widely achieved.
Disordered mesoporous carbons are generally more cost-effective than the ordered counterparts—often by roughly an order of magnitude—because they rely on simpler synthesis routes (such as activation) or disordered templates. However, due to the lack of long-range pore order, disordered mesoporous carbons typically exhibit inferior mass transport performance compared with ordered structures.
Purity as a Cost Driver
Purity plays a major role in mesoporous carbon pricing. High-purity mesoporous carbons can cost several times more than lower-grade materials, because of the use of higher-purity raw materials and/or additional purification steps.
Taking Momentum Materials’ MCP and NCP series as examples, the NCP series was designed for hydrogen fuel cell applications. Even trace amounts of sulfur or magnetic impurities—especially iron—can negatively impact fuel cell performance and durability. To address this, NCP is produced using naphthalene-based mesophase pitch as the carbon precursor. This raw material offers high purity, high carbon yield, and good graphitizability, but it is also relatively expensive, with a typical market price in the range of CA$290–355 per kilogram. Due to its high purity, NCP is also suitable for electrolysis, drug delivery, and biosensor applications where impurity control is critical.
In contrast, the MCP series is designed primarily for lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors. Considering market cost sensitivity and looser purity requirements for battery applications, we selected more cost-effective carbon precursors that balance performance and affordability. At hundreds-of-kilograms-scale orders, MCP is typically around two orders of magnitude lower in cost than NCP.
Surface Area and Cost Tradeoffs
Surface area also influences pricing. For comparison, activated carbons with high surface area can cost up to an order of magnitude more than lower surface area grades.
Within Momentum Materials’ MCP series, surface area can be tuned to over 1500 m²/g by reducing pore size. While this can improve performance for certain applications, it can also increase the material cost by 30-200%.
Surface Functionality and Production Scale
Surface functionalization can further enhance performance but adds cost. For example, nitrogen doping can increase total cost by ~2-3x, depending on the doping method and target nitrogen content.
As-produced NCP Supports™ typically contain 2–4% oxygen in the form of hydroxyl or carboxyl groups, resulting in a hydrophilic surface. For hydrogen fuel cell applications, high-temperature treatment is required to remove these oxygen-containing groups and improve carbon corrosion resistance. As a result, high-temperature-treated NCP (NCP-HT) typically costs twice as mush as the as-produced counterparts (NCP).
Economies of scale also play a critical role in cost reduction. For example, our current production capacity for NCP is approximately 300 kg per year. If demand increases to the 25-metric-ton scale, capacity expansion would enable significant cost reductions, potentially lowering material cost by approximately one order of magnitude.
Conclusion
In practice, mesoporous carbon pricing reflects a balance between structure, purity, functionalization, and scale. Highly ordered, ultra-pure materials typically command premium prices, while disordered mesoporous carbons can achieve dramatically lower costs. Large-scale orders typically result in lower unit prices due to economies of scale, while small-volume orders inevitably lead to higher prices. Understanding these tradeoffs is essential when selecting mesoporous carbon materials for commercial electrochemical, energy, and environmental applications.
If you are evaluating mesoporous carbon, visit our 🛒online store🏪 or contact Momentum Materials to discuss material selection, specifications, and pricing.