Mistake Leads to Ultra-Absorbent Material

摘要

THE MOST common way to produce high surface area materials with micro-mesoporous structures — those with pore diameters below 50 nm — is to use soft templates and build a more rigid structure around them after which the template is eluted with a solvent or burnt away to produce the rigid porous material. However, thanks to a mistake made by researchers at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, it's now possible — at low temperatures and without the use of templates — to synthesize a unique high-surface-area nanostructure with a well-defined pore-size distribution of <6-nm pores. Furthermore, the material — magnesium carbonate — is widely used, non-toxic, GRAS (generally-recognized-as-safe)-listed, and already included in the FDA Inactive Ingredients Database. Dubbed Upsalite, the new material has potential uses in chemical catalysis, drug formulation and delivery, chemical and oil spill clean-up, and odor control.