Solid silica sponge

The material created by Jackie Ying's team at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, and colleagues at the Berzelii Center EXSELENT on Porous Materials, in Stockholm, Sweden, is a new type of mesoporous silica, ie  porous silica with medium-sized pores in the range 2-50 nm. Mesoporous silica is technologically important because its pore size is just right for trapping small molecules while bigger molecules are filtered out. Until now, these materials have comprised only single or at best binary networks of disconnected pore systems and are used in separation science as molecular sieves and in catalysis. (Mesoporous materials are used in catalytic cracking in the petrochemical industry for making different types of fuel molecules for diesel, petrol and aviation fuel.)