Transformations of Molecules and Secondary Building Units to Materials

Transformations of Molecules and Secondary Building Units to Materials A Bottom-Up Approach 

Mumbai-400 076, India, Applied Chemistry Division, Mumbai University Institute of Chemical Technology, Matunga, Mumbai-400 019, India, Chemistry and Physics of Materials Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Center of Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur, Bangalore-560 064, India, 

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560 012, India, and Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Gottingen, D-37077 Gottingen, Germany 

In 1756, Cronstedt discovered a class of minerals that on heating produced steam and called them zeolites from Greek, meaning boiling stone.1 2 This was followed by the observations of Damour who noticed in 1840 that zeolites could be reversibly dehydrated and of Grandjean (1909) 

Ramaswamy Murugavel is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay and has recently received the Swarnajayanti Fellowship from Government of India for his work on synthetic inorganic chemistry applied to materials science and catalysis. 

The search for new zeolite-like structures was initially extended to aluminophosphate-based molecular sieves, and these explorations produced a variety of exotic compounds with open-framework structures, which include besides metal phosphates, carboxylates, sulfates, selenites, and selenates. Growth of this area has been rapid in the past decade necessitating new editions of the Atlas of Zeolites. It is noteworthy that metal-organic framework (MOF) solids have been included as zeolite types in the latest edition of the Atlas of Zeolites. 

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