Ordered mesoporous carbon materials have attracted great research interests due to their extremely large surface area, uniform pore size, high thermal stability and chemical inertness, which have been widely used in the areas including catalysis, adsorption, energy storage and conversion. The direct synthesis strategy from organic-organic self-assembly involving the combination of polymerizable precursors and block copolymer templates is expected to be more flexible in preparing mesoporous carbons, compared with the traditional nanocasting strategy of fussy and high-cost procedures using mesoporous silica materials as the hard template. In this critical review, we present the fundamentals and recent advances related to the researches of ordered mesoporous carbon materials from the direct synthesis strategy of block copolymer soft-templating, with a focus on their controllable preparation, modification and potential applications. Under the guidance of their formation mechanism, the preparation of ordered mesoporous carbons are detailedly discussed by synthetic pathways, including evaporation induced self-assembly method, dilute aqueous route, macroscopic phase separation and hydrothermal autoclaving process. The mesopore size and morphology control, and the hybrid carbon materials are also demonstrated. The potential applications of pure and modified mesoporous carbons in adsorption, catalysis and electrochemistry are detailed discussed. Furthermore, remarks on the challenges and perspectives of research directions are proposed for further development of ordered mesoporous carbons.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbon
2.1 Synthesis mechanism
2.2 Synthesis pathway
2.3 Mesostructure control
2.4 Pore size control
2.5 Morphology control
2.6 Hybrid carbon materials
3 Applications
3.1 Gas adsorption and storage
3.2 Dye and protein adsorption
3.3 Electrode materials for supercapacitors
3.4 Catalysis
4 Conclusion and outlook