Abstract
Macroporous and hierarchically macro/mesoporous materials (mostly monoliths and microspheres) have attracted much attention for a variety of applications, such as supporting or enabling materials in chromatography, energy storage and conversion, catalysis, biomedical devices, drug delivery systems, and environmental remediation. A well-succeeded method to obtain these tailored porous materials relies on the sol-gel technique, combined with phase separation by spinodal decomposition, and involves as well emulsification as a soft template, in the case of the synthesis of porous microspheres. Significant advancements have been witnessed, in terms of synthesis methodologies optimized either for the use of alkoxides or metal–salts and material design, including the grafting or immobilization of a specific species (or nanoparticles) to enable the most recent trends in technological applications, such as photocatalysis. In this context, the evolution, in terms of material composition and synthesis strategies, is discussed in a concerted fashion in this review, with the goal of inspiring new improvements and breakthroughs in the framework of porous materials.
Highlights
Introduction and MotivationTailored porous materials with controlled pore size, shape, and morphology are a relevant research topic in the materials and chemistry domains, due to their high potential as porous support materials, for sustainable and innovative applications in the fields of catalysis, chromatography, controlled release, scaffolds for biomedical applications, sensing, energy storage and conversion, sorption, and separation
The pioneering works by Nakanishi and Soga, on the enlightenment of phase separation induced by polymerization as a viable mechanism for porosity control in sol-gel systems, were at the origin of a variety of enabling materials for emerging technologies and advanced synthetic approaches towards tailored porous materials
This topic, which is extremely important for the development of advanced porous support materials, is still rapidly evolving, both in the field of monolithic materials and microspheres
Summary
Tailored porous materials with controlled pore size, shape, and morphology (including pore interconnectivity) are a relevant research topic in the materials and chemistry domains, due to their high potential as porous support materials, for sustainable and innovative applications in the fields of catalysis, chromatography, controlled release, scaffolds for biomedical applications, sensing, energy storage and conversion, sorption, and separation Research on such complex, often hierarchically organized, porous materials has tremendously progressed in the last decades [1], involving varied strategies for creating porosity at different scales within monolithic structures, powders, or, more recently, controlled diameter microspheres [2], which may be preferred since they can be packed into existing reactors, columns, or other containers. The sections briefly highlight the fundamentals of phase separation and its combination with sol-gel processing to achieve hierarchically porous materials, followed by the early works on sol-gel/phase separation that were at the origin of this field of study and, more recent key examples for silica-based materials, single- and multi-component oxides, and non-siliceous materials, such as phosphates, titanates, zirconates, metal-organic hybrids, and carbon
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