Properties and Applications of Mesoporous Materials

Nanoscale materials with exceptionally ordered porous features play important roles in optics, catalysis, drug delivery systems, coatings, cosmetics, bioseparation, diagnostics, gas separation, and nanotechnology. Nanoporous materials consist of amorphous or crystalline frameworks with void spaces, possibly cylindrical or cage-shaped. Most nanoporous materials fall into three main categories: micropores, mesopores, and macropores.

Microporous materials such as MOFs, zeolites, carbons and amorphous glasses have extremely narrow pore size distributions (0.5-2 nm range). These materials exhibit high thermal stability and catalytic activity, making them useful in cracking processes, and can also be used as ion exchange media, desiccants, and gas separation materials. A pore size of 50-1000nm is a macroporous material. Mesoporous materials have an intermediate pore size range: 2-50 nm.

Mesoporous materials have the following properties:

1. The pore size of mesoporous materials is uniform and adjustable
2. Large specific surface area
3. The skeleton structure is stable and easy to dope with other components
4. Good thermal stability
5. The inner surface is easy to modify

Mesoporous materials have many key advantages: narrow pore size distribution, large surface area (>500 m2/g), biocompatibility, and low toxicity.

At present, the application of ordered mesoporous materials is very extensive and has become the focus of interdisciplinary research. The main application areas are as follows:

Biomedicine

Separation of cells/DNA, separation of controlled release drugs, enzymes and proteins, etc.

General biological macromolecules, such as enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, etc., when their molecular mass is between 1 and 1 million, the size is less than 10 nm. The pore size of ordered mesoporous materials can be continuously adjusted in the range of 2 to 50 nm and has no physiological toxicity and other characteristics make it suitable for the separation of enzymes and proteins.

Environmental Science

Mesoporous materials have open pore structure, narrow pore size distribution, high specific surface area and pore volume, and can be used as good environmental purification materials. It can be used to degrade organic waste, used as a gas adsorbent, and can also be used to treat automobile exhaust and water purification.

Separation science

Mesoporous materials can be used as adsorbents to separate inorganics, small organic molecules, biological macromolecules and drug molecules. It can also be used as a chromatographic stationary phase.

Preparation of functional materials

Ordered mesoporous materials have spacious channels, and energy storage materials such as carbon or Pd can be fabricated in situ in the channels, which can increase the tractability and surface area of these energy storage materials, and can achieve the effect of transferring energy storage.

At present, most mesoporous molecular sieves have complex synthetic routes, high cost, and some technical problems, so they cannot be industrialized. Therefore, the research on this problem should be in-depth. Finding cheap, low-toxicity, facile, and rapid synthesis methods and cost-reducing methods such as recycling template agents is the direction that the development of mesoporous materials should strive for.

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