The Front Cover shows a practical and scalable soft templating synthesis procedure to prepare ordered mesoporous si
lica-carbon nanocomposites, in which the use of a rotavapor is essential to achieve a fast and reproducible synthesis.In their Communication, R. Zhong et al. demonstrate this convenient method, in which the synthesis sol comprises of green and cheap sucrose as carbon source, besides TEOS as si
lica source and F127 as the soft template. The porous composites are easily decorated with sulphonic acid groups, and these acid forms show promising app
lications as acid catalyst for the transformation of biomass-derived substrates to value-added chemicals. More information can be found in the Communication by R. Zhong et al. on
page 65 in Issue 1, 2017 (DOI:
10.1002/cctc.201600939).