To control the morphology of inorganic electrode materials for high performance lithium ion batteries, bamboo carbon with highly ordered three-dimensional microscopic porosity was employed to act as a template to confine the growth of spinel Li4Ti5O12 anode nanoparticle in its sol-gel synthesis. The bamboo carbon was removed by high temperature calcination thereafter to produce pure spinel Li4Ti5O12 (BC-LTO). The electrochemical properties of BC-LTO were thoroughly evaluated in lithium ion batteries and compared with the electrochemical properties of the spinel Li4Ti5O12 synthesized without bamboo carbon template (P-LTO). The crystal structures of BC-LTO and P-LTO were identified as the same spinel structure by X-ray diffraction. The positive effects of adding bamboo carbon during the electrode synthesis were observed to be reducing both the particle size and size distribution of BC-LTO as evidenced by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Cyclic voltammetry (CV) analysis demonstrated that BC-LTO had a higher lithium insertion/extraction reversibility than P-LTO. The BC-LTO anode delivered a capacity of 160 mAh g (1) after 50 cycles at a rate of 0.2 C, much higher than the P-LTO anode which only delivered 139 mAh g (1) under the same conditions. Detailed galvanostatic charge/discharge tests using various current rates were carried out, and the results demonstrated that BC-LTO is a promising candidate anode material for high performance lithium ion batteries. The bamboo carbon assisted sol-gel method was therefore proven to be effective in our study, and should be able to be applied to other electrochemical systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.