Developing carbon materials targeted for applications
—A summary on the annual world conference on carbon, Carbon2011

The 2011 Annual World Conference on Carbon (Carbon 2011) was held in Shanghai, China, during 24-29 July, 2011. This conference was hosted jointly by East China University of Science and Technology, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and Institute of Coal Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences. About 800 attendees from 42 countries/regions participated in this conference, and 797 papers were accepted for presentation, including 5 plenary lectures, 42 keynote lectures, 280 oral presentations, and 470 posters, involving 10 topics: graphene; nanocarbon, carbon for energy storage and conversion, porous carbon and adsorption, carbon fiber and composites, precursor/carbonization and graphitization, computation and modeling, bio-carbon and safety, novel experimental techniques and characterization, bulk carbon and industrial applications. Research and development of nanocarbons are quite active and in particular, graphene received tremendous interest. Rapid progress has also been made on the electrochemical properties, energy conversion and energy storage applications of carbon materials.