Porous materials articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    White phosphorus and yellow arsenic represent useful elemental sources for synthetic applications, but their poor stabilities make their storage highly challenging. Here, Scheer and colleagues encapsulate P4 and As4 molecules within porous activated carbons and demonstrate their use in subsequent chemical reactions.

    • Andreas E. Seitz
    • , Felix Hippauf
    •  & Manfred Scheer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional dealloying methods to produce bicontinuous open nanoporous structures for catalysis are limited to very few alloys and produce chemical waste. Here, the authors develop a green process, vapor-phase dealloying, to selectively remove high partial vapor pressure components and create nanoporosity in a wide range of alloys.

    • Zhen Lu
    • , Cheng Li
    •  & Mingwei Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-dimensional materials show great potential for membrane technologies, but their disordered channels hinder their molecular sieving performance. Here, Wang, Gogotsi and colleagues design a MXene membrane with ordered nanochannels that exhibits an excellent H2/CO2 gas separation performance.

    • Li Ding
    • , Yanying Wei
    •  & Yury Gogotsi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Membrane separation technologies show promise for CO2 capture, but typically suffer from a trade-off between permeance and selectivity. Here, the authors produce hollow fiber membranes coated with graphene oxide and a CO2-philic agent that can efficiently separate CO2 from flue gas under wet conditions.

    • Fanglei Zhou
    • , Huynh Ngoc Tien
    •  & Miao Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modulating the adsorption behaviours of metal-organic frameworks using external stimuli is desirable, but challenging to achieve. Here, Zhou and colleagues design an indium-based MOF in which tetrathiafulvalene ligands undergo reversible redox reactions that alter the framework breathing behaviour.

    • Jian Su
    • , Shuai Yuan
    •  & Hong-Cai Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrogen is attractive as a clean fuel for motor vehicles and porous carbons represent promising hydrogen storage materials. Here, Mokaya and colleagues incorporate oxygen-rich functional groups into porous carbons with high microporosity, showing that such materials exhibit significantly enhanced H2 storage capacity.

    • L. Scott Blankenship
    • , Norah Balahmar
    •  & Robert Mokaya

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Owing to their unique properties, hollow metal nanocrystals demonstrate greater catalytic promise than their solid counterparts. Here the authors produce hollow and inflated palladium nanocrystals with thin shells via a repeated Kirkendall cavitation process, and demonstrate their activity for formic acid oxidation.

    • He Tianou
    • , Weicong Wang
    •  & Yadong Yin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coating porous membranes with nanoparticles can enhance their separation and antifouling properties, but methods to do so remain complex. Here, Lee and colleagues use solvent transfer-induced phase separation to prepare nanoparticle-functionalized hollow fiber membranes from bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels.

    • Martin F. Haase
    • , Harim Jeon
    •  & Daeyeon Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low-dimensional nanomaterials are crucial conducting components of stretchable electronics, but their mechanical reinforcement remains challenging. Here, the authors infiltrate carbon nanotubes into a porous ceramic network to produce a 3D nanofelted self-entangled assembly with high conductivity and mechanical stability.

    • Fabian Schütt
    • , Stefano Signetti
    •  & Rainer Adelung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    With ligand-mediated layer-by-layer assembly between metal nanoparticles and small organic molecules, the authors prepare metallic paper electrodes for supercapacitors with high power and energy densities. This approach could be extended to various electrodes for portable/wearable electronics.

    • Yongmin Ko
    • , Minseong Kwon
    •  & Jinhan Cho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon-based electrodes able to intercalate Li+ and Na+ ions have been exploited for high performing energy storage devices. Here, the authors combine the ion intercalation properties of porous graphitic carbons with the redox chemistry of iodine to produce iodine–carbon batteries with high reversible capacities.

    • Ke Lu
    • , Ziyu Hu
    •  & Jintao Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous polymer fibers show great potential for a range of applications, but their simple structures typically limit their functionality. Here, the authors combine a thermal drawing process with polymer solution phase separation to fabricate porous multimaterial fibers with complex internal architectures.

    • Benjamin Grena
    • , Jean-Baptiste Alayrac
    •  & Yoel Fink

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon-based materials are promising alternatives to noble metal catalysts, but their structures are typically disordered and difficult to control. Here, the authors obtain ordered carbonaceous frameworks with advantageous electrocatalytic properties via the carbonization of nickel-containing porphyrin dimer networks.

    • Hirotomo Nishihara
    • , Tetsuya Hirota
    •  & Fumito Tani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    2D nanomaterials are promising capacitive energy storage materials, but their tendency to restack hinders electrolyte transport. Here, Yamauchi and colleagues introduce 2D ordered mesoporous carbons in between MXene layers, and metal removal affords all-carbon porous 2D–2D heterostructures in which restacking is prevented.

    • Jie Wang
    • , Jing Tang
    •  & Yusuke Yamauchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Regulating guest access and release in porous materials remains an important goal. Here, May and colleagues elucidate the mechanism by which guest admission can be temperature-regulated in typical microporous materials, and experimentally exploit this process to achieve appreciable and reversible hydrogen storage.

    • Gang (Kevin) Li
    • , Jin Shang
    •  & Eric F. May

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ice recrystallization is important for a range of research fields, both applied and fundamental, however the effect of ions on this process is not well known. Here the authors discover an ion-specific Hofmeister type effect on ice recrystallization, using this phenomenon to prepare porous materials with tuneable pore sizes.

    • Shuwang Wu
    • , Chongqin Zhu
    •  & Jianjun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ordered mesoporous carbons have shown promise in a range of applications, but sustainable methods to achieve their large scale production are lacking. Here, Dai and coworkers produce OMCs via the mechanochemical assembly of non-toxic polyphenol-metal complexes and triblock copolymers, followed by pyrolysis.

    • Pengfei Zhang
    • , Li Wang
    •  & Sheng Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant and animal tissues have evolved to contain hierarchical networks of pores that maximize mass transfer and exchange. Here the authors fabricate bio-inspired materials with multi-scale macro–meso–micropores and show their enhanced performances as photocatalysts, gas sensors and Li-ion battery electrodes.

    • Xianfeng Zheng
    • , Guofang Shen
    •  & Bao-Lian Su

  • Article
    | Open Access

    IRMOF-74 materials have thus far been thought to undergo only simple crystal lattice expansion upon gas adsorption. Here, Smit and co-workers demonstrate that these MOFs undergo a unique complex deformation upon argon uptake, changing how we view the fundamentals of adsorption in this series.

    • Sudi Jawahery
    • , Cory M. Simon
    •  & Berend Smit

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fracture and related processes are typically considered detrimental, but have also attracted interest in more constructive roles. Here authors demonstrate ordered fragmentation at submicron scales of a metal oxide/hydroxide thin film by introducing preferential sites for fracture on the underlying substrate.

    • L. Guo
    • , Y. Ren
    •  & S. Y. Chiam

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is on-going research into efficient noble metal-free materials for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Here, the authors prepare ternary molybdenum sulfoselenide particles supported on three-dimensional porous nickel selenide foam, and demonstrate the high efficiency of the hydrogen evolving composite.

    • Haiqing Zhou
    • , Fang Yu
    •  & Zhifeng Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proton conduction is a fundamental process for fuel cell development, but three-dimensional proton conduction in crystalline porous solids is rare. Here, the authors report organic molecular cages in which the structure imposes three-dimensional proton conductivity competing with metal-organic frameworks.

    • Ming Liu
    • , Linjiang Chen
    •  & Andrew I. Cooper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon dioxide capture technologies have been implemented as a strategy to alleviate the environmental costs of CO2 emissions. Here, the authors synthesize a functionalized-polyethyleneimine/silica adsorbent for post-combustion CO2 capture that exhibits a large CO2capacity and long-term stability.

    • Woosung Choi
    • , Kyungmin Min
    •  & Minkee Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chiral compounds are extremely important as they can be used in medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. Here, Kuhn and co-workers use a mesoporous metal structure encoded with chiral information in order to induce asymmetry in electrochemical synthesis of mandelic acid.

    • Thittaya Yutthalekha
    • , Chularat Wattanakit
    •  & Alexander Kuhn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithium–sulfur batteries have high theoretical capacities but their performance is limited by poor conductivity and low stability. Here, the authors fabricate three-dimensional porous graphitic carbon composites containing sulfur nanoparticles and probe the effect of sulfur content on battery performance.

    • Guoxing Li
    • , Jinhua Sun
    •  & Jianxin Geng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Naturally occurring single crystals can exhibit various intricate porous morphologies. Here, the authors are able to grow nanoporous single crystals of gold following solidification of a eutectic composition melt that forms as a result of the dewetting of nanometric thin films.

    • Maria Koifman Khristosov
    • , Leonid Bloch
    •  & Boaz Pokroy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous silicon is highly promising as an anode material in lithium ion batteries, but its volume change upon lithiation has deleterious effects upon efficiency. Here, the authors demonstrate porous shell/hollow core Si nanospheres which exhibit negligible outward expansion and maintain performance.

    • Qiangfeng Xiao
    • , Meng Gu
    •  & Mei Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanospace defined by unsaturated metal coordination sites opens up the possibility of controlling and templating chemical reactivity. Here, the authors show that a Fe(III) dicarboxylate framework with triangularly arranged metal sites can direct the [2+2+2] cyclisation of nitriles, alkynes and alkenes.

    • Yong-Sheng Wei
    • , Mei Zhang
    •  & Xiao-Ming Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    During the transient adsorption of a binary mixture in a nanoporous host, the concentration of one component may temporarily exceed its equilibrium value, with molecules diffusing in the direction of increasing concentration. Here, the authors use microimaging to examine this process in a real system.

    • Alexander Lauerer
    • , Tomas Binder
    •  & Jörg Kärger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Well-defined, large surface area nanostructures are promising functional materials but can be difficult to fabricate. Here the authors show how to prepare ultrahigh-surface-area hollow carbon nanospheres, via a controlled carbonization route, and assess their organic vapour adsorption and electrochemical performance.

    • Fei Xu
    • , Zhiwei Tang
    •  & Dingcai Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The removal of acetylene from ethylene/acetylene mixtures is an industrially important but challenging task. Here the authors report a microporous metal–organic framework with optimized pore/cage space design and chemical functionalization, capable of removing acetylene from low concentration mixtures.

    • Tong-Liang Hu
    • , Hailong Wang
    •  & Banglin Chen

  • Article |

    Hollow, spherical nano/microstructures are potentially useful for energy and drug delivery applications. Here, the authors show that these structures can be fabricated from covalent organic frameworks, and exploit their chemical stability and mesoporous structures for enzyme encapsulation.

    • Sharath Kandambeth
    • , V. Venkatesh
    •  & Rahul Banerjee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is extensive research into non-platinum electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. Here, the authors report a molybdenum carbide catalyst, prepared via the carburization of a copper metal-organic framework host/molybdenum-based polyoxometalates guest system, and demonstrate its catalytic activity.

    • Hao Bin Wu
    • , Bao Yu Xia
    •  & Xiong Wen (David) Lou

  • Article |

    Solution self-assembly of block copolymers is one approach for creating porous materials with highly organized bicontinuous mesoporous networks. Here, the authors use copolymers with branched hydrophilic blocks to fabricate mesoporous monoliths with large-pore networks weaved in crystalline lattices.

    • Chiyoung Park
    • , Yunju La
    •  & Kyoung Taek Kim

  • Article |

    Particulate matter pollution is a public health concern in industrialized and urban areas. Here, the authors control the surface chemistry and microstructure of filtration materials to fabricate effective and transparent air filters for the capture of PM2.5pollutants.

    • Chong Liu
    • , Po-Chun Hsu
    •  & Yi Cui

  • Article |

    Scalable routes towards porous graphene are useful for developing materials for mass transfer applications. Here, the authors report the fabrication of porous graphene with controllable pore size and nitrogen content via the carbothermal reaction of graphene and (poly)oxometallates.

    • Ding Zhou
    • , Yi Cui
    •  & Bao-Hang Han

Browse broader subjects

Browse Porous materials across other nature.com journals