Since 1992, which brought the first report on the self-assembly of silica species in the presence of cationic surfactants leading to novel ordered mesoporous silicas (OMS) of hexagonal (MCM-41), cubic (MCM-48) and lamellar (MCM-50) structures, a significant progress has been made in the area of ordered mesoporous materials (OMM); mesopores have widths between 2 and 50 nm. The supramolecular self-assembly of various inorganic and organic species into well-defined mesostructures became a powerful method for the synthesis of mesoporous molecular sieves of tailored framework composition, porous structure, pore size and desired surface functionality.
Intensive research in the area of OMM brought several important discoveries providing fresh incentives for further innovations. As far as the synthesis of OMM is concerned, the most important milestones are: (i) synthesis of large pore of OMS by using block copolymers as soft templates, (ii) self-assembly of silsesquioxanes leading to ordered mesoporous organosilicas with bridging groups, (iii) nanocasting synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons (OMC) using OMS and colloidal crystals as hard templates, (iv) synthesis of OMC using block copolymers as soft templates, (v) fabrication of mesoporous materials with crystalline walls, and so on. This presentation shows that the self-assembly of simple or mixed precursors creates almost unlimited opportunities for designing the framework and surface chemistry of OMM. It is noteworthy that a remarkable progress in the synthesis of OMM has been accompanied by the development of a wide variety of potential applications of these materials in adsorption, catalysis, separations, environmental cleanup, drug delivery, sensing, optoelectronics, nanotechnology and so on.
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