Nanoporous Materials: Synthesis Concepts and Model Experiments for School Chemistry Education

Nanoporous Materials, like carbons, silica and semiconducting metal oxides, play a major role in recent scientific research, especially in the fields of energy storage, catalysis, material separation and sensor technology. Thus, our aim is to focus on simple synthesis concepts for these materials, such as soft matter templating or nanocasting, which can be easily introduced by means of appropriate models in school chemistry education or school laboratories. In addition to facile and realizable syntheses in school, several experiments concerning catalysis and gas sensing will be presented, too. By these experiments the characteristics of nanoporous materials can be obviously demonstrated and additionally, these experiments can serve as a starting point for further experiments that could easily be developed by students themselves, particularly in relation to environmental issues.