Porous materials, including microporous and ordered mesoporous materials, are very useful in various applications ranging from catalysis, adsorption, and energy materials, to biotechnology due to their porous structures, adjustable frameworks, and surface properties. Many successful synthetic pathways and strategies have been reported for the synthesis of porous siliceous materials, such as hydrothermal synthesis, use of templates or structural directing agents, or the cooperative self-assembly of inorganic species – surfactants.

However, the design and synthesis of ordered nonsiliceous mesoporous materials are more important from an industrial perspective and their syntheses provide additional challenges.

For example, it is difficult to obtain highly structurally ordered transition-metal oxide mesoporous materials because the hydrolysis and polymerization of alkoxides are more difficult to control. It is especially difficult to obtain mesoporous carbon materials with an ordered structure via a sol–gel process involving a surfactant templating strategy in a solution synthesis system, owing to the complexity of the carbon-structure evolution.

As an alternative synthesis pathway, “nanocasting” has been developed for creating materials that are difficult to synthesize by conventional processes. Nanocasting uses hard templates to create ordered replicas, providing promising routes for the preparation of nanostructured porous materials with novel framework compositions. The nanocasting pathway opens the door to the design of highly porous solids with multifunctional properties and interesting application perspectives.

In this book, the basic principles of nanocasting are introduced, the various replicated porous materials with their different framework compositions, structures, and properties are described, and recent developments of nanocasting synthesis are summarized.

In response to these needs, this book includes six chapters:

(1) principles of nanocasting;

 

(2) porous nanocast carbons;

(3) morphology and crystallinity control of nanocast carbons;

(4) nanocast mesoporous metal oxides, sulfides, carbides and polymers;

(5) repeat nanocasting to create zeolites, mesoporous silicas, metal oxides and nitrides;

(6) functionalization and application of nanocast porous materials.

Also, there are 12 detailed synthesis recipes of various hard templates, including porous silicas, porous carbons and colloidal spheres, are given in appendix. Extensive figures, schemes, and references provide suitable complement to the text to help readers in understanding the content with minimal confusion or difficulty.

The topic of this book is timely, the authors are experts and have made great impacts in this research field. Most of the original works, including the development of nanocasting strategy and synthesis of cast porous materials, were completed by these authors.

In summary, this book covers the concepts and methods of nanocasting and its applications in creating nanostructured porous materials. Overall, this book could easily find use as a reference book for graduate-level chemists and material scientists.