Advances in the textural characterization of nanoporous materials with hierarchical pore structure

Matthias Thommes (Quantachrome Corporation)

A comprehensive structural characterization of nanoporous materials has become more important than ever for the optimization of novel systems used in many important existing and potentially new applications. The most popular method to obtain surface area, pore size, pore size distribution and porosity information from powders and porous solids is gas adsorption. Despite the major progress achieved in the field of physical adsorption characterization during the last 20 years, new challenges emerged concerning the surface and textural characterization of nanoporous materials exhibiting complex pore networks as can be found for instance in mesoporous zeolites.

Applications of hierarchical nanoporous materials such as mesoporous zeolites require an in-depth pore structural characterization. Detailed insights about the pore architecture (e.g., pore size,pore size/volume distribution, pore volume, and pore interconnectivity) are particularly important because they affect transport phenomena and diffusional rates which is crucial for many key applications including catalysis. Adsorption isotherms obtained on such materials indicate a complex sorption and phase behavior of the confined fluid, which includes micropore filling, multilayer adsorption, pore condensation and hysteresis. An in-depth understanding of these phenomena mechanisms in correlation with the complex pore network structure is crucial for a reliable assessment of pore size/pore size distribution, porosity, surface area and pore interconnectivity.We demonstrate that combining advanced experimental protocols with state-of-the-art data analysis methods based on density functional theory allows one to obtain an accurate pore structural analysis of hierarchically structured nanomaterials over the complete range of micro-and mesopores.

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