"The Charcoal Seller cuts firewood and burns charcoal in the southern mountains." This line by the Tang Dynasty poet Ju-Yi Bai vividly portrays the significant role of carbon materials in the daily lives of ancient people. Carbon, a quintessential porous material, has been utilized in diverse fields such as painting, bronze smelting, and as an antiseptic. Throughout history, porous materials have held a prominent position in modern chemistry and materials science. However, it is only recently that their developmental journey has captured the attention of the scientific community. How porous structures influence material properties, and how to design these structures to achieve specific functions and optimal attributes, remain "a dark cloud" in the field of porous materials research.
A team led by Professor Bao-Lian Su from Wuhan University of Technology, in collaboration with Professor Ming-Yuan He's team from East China Normal University, has summarized the developmental history of porous materials and further proposed a promising blueprint for "Pore Science and Engineering."
Prof. Su introduces "since its discovery in nature in 1756, zeolites, a classic type of porous material, have undergone flourishing developments in chemical composition and pore size, ushering in a "golden age" characterized by diverse structures such as inorganic frameworks, organic-inorganic hybrids, organic frameworks, and pores ranging from micro- to meso- and macroporous scales." These materials, featuring single-level pore structures, constitute what is known as Porous Materials 1.0.
"As industrial demands for catalytic reaction efficiency and catalyst utilization increased, single-pore materials gradually proved inadequate for molecular diffusion needs" said by Prof. He. Hierarchically porous structures—efficient diffusion architectures refined by nature over millions of years—emerged as a solution. In 2003, Su's group developed a hierarchically porous structure combining macro-, meso-, and micropores was synthesized for the first time. Since then, hierarchical porosity has been widely introduced into zeolite materials to enhance molecular diffusion and catalytic efficiency. These hierarchical materials, characterized by their multi-level, interconnected, and ordered pore structures, form Porous Materials 2.0.
Aiming for rational design of pore structures, the authors delved into the essential properties and design theories of pore architectures, proposing the concept of "Pore Science and Engineering." This concept encompasses two key aspects: Pore Chemistry and Pore Structure. Pore Chemistry includes pivotal scientific principles such as shape-selective effects, traffic control effects, confinement effects, and molecular recognition effects. Pore Structure involves design theories, including the quantitative relationships within efficient diffusion structures (known as the generalized Murray's law, or Su's law) and the quantitative relationships between reaction kinetics and pore characteristics (e.g., pore size, architecture, and cage domain structures).
The authors call upon researchers to collectively propel porous materials into a new era of development. With the support of technologies like artificial intelligence, they aim to achieve precise molecular-level control guided by theoretical foundations. The development of porous materials will transform from a "trial-and-error approach" to "on-demand design".
