How will carbon material lead to a low carbon society ----A review of Carbon 2012

A review is given of the Annual World Conference on Carbon, which was held on June 17-22, 2012 in Krakow, Poland and organized by the Polish Carbon Society. In this conference, 5 plenary lectures, 30 keynote lectures, 220 oral presentations and 465 posters were divided into 10 topics, i.e., carbons for energy storage; carbons for health and environmental protection; precursors, processing and technology; carbon nanomaterials; porous carbons; carbon-based composites; graphene; new methods for carbon characterization; computation and modeling; and industrial news. Besides traditional modification on surface area and porosity, doping with hetero atoms such as N, B and P or compositing with metals or metal oxides have been developed into effective means for modifying carbon materials for improved adsorption, catalysis and energy-storage performance. The applications of novel carbon structures like nanotubes are still limited by the controllable and scalable preparation, processability and reactivity. Research on the structure and properties of graphene is moving from curiosity-oriented to application-oriented. Mathematical formulation or modeling of pore structures has been promoted by the progress in characterization methods. The modification of the surface/interface in carbon materials, which plays important roles in determining their physical, chemical or mechanical properties is still a focus of research activity in carbon materials.