Ionothermal carbon materials : advanced synthesis and electrochemical applications Alternative concepts for energy storage and conversion have to be developed optimized and employed to fulfill the dream of a fossil independent energy economy. Porous carbon materials play a major role in many energy related devices. Among different characteristics distinct porosity features e.g. specific surface area (SSA) total pore volume (TPV) and the pore size distribution (PSD) are important to maximize the performance in the final device. In order to approach the aim to synthesize carbon materials with tailor made porosity in a sustainable fashion the present thesis focused on biomass derived precursors employing and developing the ionothermal carbonization. During the ionothermal carbonization a salt melt simultaneously serves as solvent and porogen. Typically eutectic mixtures containing zinc chloride are employed as salt phase. The first topic of the present thesis addressed the possibility to precisely tailor the porosity of ionothermal carbon materials by an experimentally simple variation of the molar composition of the binary salt mixture. The developed pore tuning tool allowed the synthesis of glucose derived carbon materials with predictable SSAs in the range of ~ 900 to ~ 2100 m2 g 1. Moreover the nucleobase adenine was employed as precursor introducing nitrogen functionalities in the final material. Thereby the chemical properties of the carbon materials are varied leading to new application fields. Nitrogen doped carbons (NDCs) are able to catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) which takes place on the cathodic site of a fuel cell. The herein developed porosity tailoring allowed the synthesis of adenine derived NDCs with outstanding SSAs of up to 2900 m2 g 1 and very large TPV of 5.19 cm3 g 1....