Carbon material, method for producing same, and use for same

A carbon material, being a non-flaky carbon material, wherein a ratio between a peak intensity I110 of (110) plane and a peak intensity I004 of (004) plane of a graphite crystal determined by a powder XRD measurement, I110/I004, is 0.10 or more and 0.35 or less;

• an average circularity is 0.80 or more and 0.95 or less;
• an average interplanar spacing d002 of (002) plane by an X-ray diffraction method is 0.337 nm or less;
• and a total pore volume of pores having a diameter of 0.4 μm or less measured by a nitrogen gas adsorption method is 25.0 μl/g or more and 40.0 μl/g or less;
• and by observing optical structures in a cross-section of the carbon material, when areas of the optical structures are accumulated from a smallest structure in an ascending order, SOP represents an area of an optical structure whose accumulated area corresponds to 60% of a total area of all the optical structures;
• when the structures are counted from a structure of a smallest aspect ratio in an ascending order, AROP represents an aspect ratio of a structure which ranks at a position of 60% in a total number of all the structures;
• and when D50 represents a median diameter in a volume-based cumulative particle size distribution by laser diffraction method, SOP, AROP and D50 satisfy the following relationships:
• 1.5≤AROP≤6.0 and
• 0.2×D50≤(SOP×AROP)1/2<2×D50.