Nanostructures made of carbon are extremely versatile: they can desalinate water, store gases, and absorb ions in batteries and supercapacitors. This versatility requires that the distribution, size and shape of the structure’s pores be controlled. Now a team from the HZB Institute for Soft Matter and Functional Materials and the University of Tartu, Estonia has developed a small-angle X-ray scattering technique to gather information on the structure.