Microporous oxides are inorganic materials with wide applications in separations, ion exchange and catalysis^{1, 2, 3}. In such materials, an important determinant of pore size is the number of M (where M = Si, Ge and so on) atoms in the rings delineating the channels¹. The important faujasite structure exhibits 12-ring structures while those of zeolites^{4, 5}, germanates^{6, 7, 8} and other⁸ materials can be much larger. Recent attention has focused on mesoporous materials with larger pores of nanometre scale^{9, 10, 11}; however, with the exception of an inorganic–organic hybrid¹², these have amorphous pore walls, limiting many applications. Chiral porous oxides are particularly desirable for enantioselective sorption and catalysis¹³. However, they are very rare in microporous^{14, 15} and mesoporous¹⁶ materials. Here we describe a mesoporous germanium oxide, SU-M, with gyroidal channels separated by crystalline walls that lie about the G (gyroid) minimal surface as in the mesoporous MCM-48 (ref. 9). It has the largest primitive cell and lowest framework density of any inorganic material and channels that are defined by 30-rings. One of the two gyroidal channel systems of SU-M can be filled with additional oxide, resulting in a mesoporous crystal (SU-MB) with chiral channels.

1. Structural Chemistry, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
2. Corpuscular Inc., 52 Papania Drive, Mahopac, New York 10541, USA
3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA

Correspondence to: Xiaodong Zou¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to X.D.Z. (Email: zou@struc.su.se). The additional crystallographic data for SU-M (CCDC-278829) and SU-MB (CCDC-278830) can be obtained free of charge from The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre via http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/ data_request/cif.

Received 26 April 2005; Accepted 28 July 2005

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