Toward a sustainable future: paradigm shifts, challenges, and convergence in green synthesis strategies for carbon materials

As a cornerstone of modern industry, carbon materials face fundamental challenges in sustainability, precise structural control, and energy consumption through traditional synthesis methods. This review systematically analyzes four emerging green synthesis strategies driving a paradigm shift in this field: innovation at the source using biomass-derived carbon precursors to implement a circular economy; template-assisted synthesis (exemplified by MOF-derived carbon) enabling engineered customization of materials at multiple hierarchical levels; novel physical methods such as rapid Joule heating and microwave technology, which, by extreme compression of energy and time, open up new efficient and energy-saving synthesis pathways; and bottom-up organic synthesis, representing the pinnacle of atom-precision manufacturing and ultimate electronic structure control. Using ‘sustainability, precision, scalability’ as the analytical framework, this article delves into the principles, advantages, and core bottlenecks of each strategy. Beyond reviewing individual techniques, this paper emphasizes the positioning, comparison, and potential integration of different strategies, aiming to map a future blueprint from ‘extensive manufacturing’ to ‘green intelligent manufacturing.’ Finally, we point out that future research should focus on deepening the understanding of synthesis mechanisms, integrating data intelligence, and establishing full lifecycle assessment standards, ultimately achieving on-demand design and intelligent manufacturing of sustainable carbon materials.