The changing state of porous materials

Porous materials contain regions of empty space into which guest molecules can be selectively adsorbed and sometimes chemically transformed. This has made them useful in both industrial and domestic applications, ranging from gas separation, energy storage and ion exchange to heterogeneous catalysis and green chemistry. Porous materials are often ordered (crystalline) solids. Order—or uniformity—is frequently held to be advantageous, or even pivotal, to our ability to engineer useful properties in a rational way. Here we highlight the growing evidence that topological disorder can be useful in creating alternative properties in porous materials. In particular, we highlight here several concepts for the creation of novel porous liquids, rationalize routes to porous glasses and provide perspectives on applications for porous liquids and glasses.

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Acknowledgements

T.D.B. acknowledges the Royal Society for a University Research Fellowship (UF150021), the Leverhulme Trust for a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, New Zealand, for a University of Cambridge Visiting Canterbury Fellowship. F.-X.C. acknowledges funding by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-18-CE29-0009-01). A.I.C. acknowledges the Leverhulme Trust for funding through the Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Thomas D. Bennett
  2. Chimie ParisTech, PSL University, CNRS, Institut de Recherche de Chimie Paris, Paris, France François-Xavier Coudert
  3. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK Stuart L. James
  4. Materials Innovation Factory and Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Andrew I. Cooper
  5. Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design, Materials Innovation Factory and Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Andrew I. Cooper
  1. Thomas D. Bennett