Adsorption in Nanoporous Materials

The term adsorption was proposed by Kayser in 1881 to describe the increase in concentration of gas molecules on neighboring solid surfaces, a phenomenon earlier noticed by Fontana and Scheele in 1777. 

The majority of adsorbents applied in industry has porous sizes in the nanometer region. In this pore-size territory, adsorption is an important method for the characterization of porous materials. To be precise, gas adsorption provides information concerning the microporous volume, the mes-opore area, the volume and size of the pores, and the energetics of adsorption. Also, gas adsorption is an important unitary operation for the industrial and sustainable energy and pollution abatement applications of nanoporous materials. 

Nanoporous materials like zeolites and related materials, mesoporous molecular sieves, clays, pillared clays, the majority of silica, alumina, active carbons, titanium dioxides, magnesium oxides, carbon nanotubes and metal-organic frameworks are the most widely studied and applied adsorbents. In the case of crystalline and ordered nanoporous materials such as zeolites and related materials, and mesoporous molecular sieves, their categorization as nanoporous materials are not debated. However, in the case of amorphous porous materials, they possess bigger pores together with pores sized less than 100 nm. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, the nanoporous component is the most important part of the porosity. 

On the other hand, in addition to adsorption properties, nanoporous materials are a group of advanced materials with other excellent properties and applications in many fields, for example, optics, electronics, ionic conduction, ionic exchange, gas separation, membranes, coatings, catalysts, catalyst supports, sensors, pollution abatement, detergency, and biology [1-42], 

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