Carbon materials with multi-modal pore structures can integrate advantages of mciro-, meso- and/or macropores in mass transfer, besides their large specific surface area, large pore volume, excellent chemical stability and good electron conductivity. They are highly promising in applications such as electrochemical capacity, drug delivery, catalysis, adsorption, and separation due to these outstanding properties. Solid materials with different macrostructures including stacked silica and organic microspheres are often used as hard templates for synthesizing hierarchically porous carbon with various pore shapes and pore sizes. Besides these templates, commercial polyurethane foam with a tri-dimensionally interconnected cellular network, controllable porosity, and easy removal make it a competitive candidate as a skeleton template. It have been used as a sacrificial matrix for fabricating hierarchically porous materials including silica, ceramic, biological scaffold, nanocrystalline metal oxide, metal foam and nanocomposite. In this review, we present recent development in the fabrication and application of hierarchically porous carbons templated from polyurethane foam. The obtained carbons with monomodal or bimodal pore structure, which were prepared by introducing microporous or mesostructured template additionally, are cautiously classified for discussion in details. Their unique performances in applications of energy storage, catalysis reaction and large molecule separation are also briefly mentioned. Challenges in adjusting the ratio of pores in three scales, graphitizing, and enhancing the mechanical strengthen of carbons are still remained for further development. Some strategies aiming to the problems are also proposed.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Preparation of hierarchically porous carbon materials using polyurethane foam as a template
2.1 Macroporous carbon
2.2 Macro-mesoporous carbon
2.3 Micro-mesoporous carbon
2.4 Macro-microporous carbon
3 Conclusion