Mesoporous material

A mesoporous material is a material containing pores with diameters between 2 and 50 nm.

Porous materials are classified into several kinds by their size. According to IUPAC notation (see J. Rouquerol et al., Pure & Appl. Chem, 66 (1994) 1739-1758), microporous materials have pore diameters of less than 2 nm and macroporous materials have pore diameters of greater than 50 nm; the mesoporous category thus lies in the middle.

Typical mesoporous materials include some kinds of silica and alumina that have similarly-sized fine mesopores. Mesoporous oxides of niobium, tantalum, titanium, zirconium, cerium and tin have also been reported. According the IUPAC notation, a mesoporous material can be disordered or ordered in a mesostructure.

The first mesoporous material, with a long range order, was synthesized in the late 80:ies/ early 90:ies, by a research group of the former Mobil Oil Company (see Kresge et al., Nature 359 (1992) 710). Since then, research in this field has steadily grown. Notable examples of prospective applications are catalysis, sorption, gas sensing, optics, and photovoltaics.

Tentative layout of this article

 * Introduction to porous materials
 * Mesoporous materials
 * Synthetic pathways
 * Self-assembly
 * Templated self-assembly
 * Sol-gel processing
 * Historical overview of mesoporous materials
 * MCM 41
 * SBA
 * Synthesis of mesoporous materials
 * Model of mesostructure formation by ionic surfactants
 * Thermodynamic and kinetic considerations
 * Hybrid interfaces
 * Nonionic templating agents
 * Other structure-directing agents
 * Amphiphilic block copolymers
 * Mesostructured films
 * Technological importance
 * Fundamentals of EISA
 * Precursor solution
 * Film deposition
 * Post-processing
 * Selected examples
 * References
 * References