Chemistry of porous materials: From microporous inorganic solids to metal-organic frameworks

In this short review, the progress in the synthetic and structural chemistry of porous materials, including microporous inorganic solids and metal-organic frameworks, will be presented. Porous materials are a class of solids with regular pores or voids. They may find widespread applications in some industrial processes, such as catalysis, separation and ion-exchange. Zeolites (aluminosilicates) are the most well-known microporous molecular sieves. During the past decades, a huge number of new zeolite-like inorganic solids like phosphates, arsenates, germanates, phosphite, sulfate and supertetrahedral sulfides have been synthesized and characterized. Recently, the researches on coordination polymers and metal-organic frameworks are very intense, which enrich the diverse structures and various stoichiometries of microporous materials.