Summary and Outlook - Mesoporous Organic-Inorganic Non-Siliceous Hybrid Materials - page 116

Chapter 6
Summary and Outlook

Abstract A summary of the synthesis, properties and applications of mesoporous
non-siliceous organic-inorganic hybrid materials is provided herein. With the use
of organophosphonic/sulfonic/carboxylic acids and their derivatives (salts, esters)
as coupling molecules, mesoporous metal phosphonate/sulfonate/carboxylate
materials with a homogeneous distribution of considerable organic functional
groups in the hybrid frameworks could be achieved. A variety of methods have
been developed to successfully incorporate mesoporosity into the hybrid networks
and control the resultant micro-/macro-morphologies. Mesoporous non-siliceous
organic-inorganic materials have found diverse potential applications across broad
ranges in adsorption and separation, catalysis, sustainable energy conversion and
storage, and biomaterials. Nonetheless, there are still unclear areas that deserve
research fellows to imagine and explore.

Keywords Mesoporous materials · Organic-inorganic hybrid · Non-siliceous
hybrid · Perspectives

Mesoporous metal carboxylates, phosphonates, and sulfonates, as the three most
fascinating members of non-siliceous hybrids with alternative organic-inorganic
frameworks, have attracted great research interest in the past decades due to their
outstanding physicochemical properties. In order to improve the accessibility
of the pores, a template-free methodology via enlarging the organic linkages has
been proved to be facile and effective, but restricted. The soft-templating approach
has been realized to synthesize mesoporous hybrids with a uniform pore width,
high surface area, and even hierarchical porosity. The control over the mesophase
symmetry, the pore sizes, and the crystallinity of the pore walls is relevant to the
structure of the surfactant molecules and the synthesis method. Morphological
adjustment through a variety of fabrication techniques is feasible, which endows
them with capabilities in diverse production fields. The synthesized mesoporous
non-silica-based hybrid materials could be utilized as efficient host solids for
the adsorption and separation of gas, liquid, heavy metal ions, as well as organic