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Nitrogen-containing ordered mesoporous carbon has been prepared by a soft-templating strategy, without using intricate prepolymerization and hydrothermal solidification steps. This strategy involves the use of hexamethylenetetramine, slow releasing source of formaldehyde for the self-assembly of resorcinol–urea–formaldehyde resin, to mediate the formation of nitrogen enriched carbon organic precursor, whereas ampliphilic triblock copolymer (Pluronic F127) was used as a template. Small angle X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microcopy, nitrogen sorption demonstrated that the obtained mesoporous carbon possessed a body-centered cubic Im 3‾ m structure with a high surface area. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed that the incorporated nitrogen was present in the form of pyridine, pyrrolyic/pyridine, quaternary and oxidized nitrogen. The presence of nitrogen groups in the resulting material …