Issue 1, 2023

Nanoporous ices: an emerging class in the water/ice family

Abstract

The history of scientific research on diverse ice structures dates back to more than a century. To date, 20 three-dimensional crystalline ice phases (ice I-ice XX) have been identified in the laboratory, among which ice XVI and ice XVII belong to a class of low-density nanoporous ices. Nanoporous ices can also be viewed as a special class of porous materials or water ice, as they possess a relatively high fraction of nano-cavities and/or nano-channels built into the hydrogen-bonded water framework. As such, like the prototypical class of porous materials (e.g., MOFs and COFs), nanoporous ices can be named as water oxygen-vertex frameworks (WOFs). Because of their large surface-to-volume ratio, WOFs may be potential media for gas storage, gas purification and separation. They may be applied to the biomedical field owing to their excellent biocompatibility. The field of porous ices is still emerging, as many porous ice structures that are predicted to be stable by computer simulations require future experimental confirmation. For future theoretical/computational studies, as the machine-learning method becomes an increasingly popular research tool in the material science and chemical science fields, more reliable porous ice structures and phase diagrams will be predicted with the development of more accurate machine-learning force fields.

Graphical abstract: Nanoporous ices: an emerging class in the water/ice family

Article information

Article type
Minireview
Submitted
17 10 2022
Accepted
28 11 2022
First published
28 11 2022

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 92-100

Nanoporous ices: an emerging class in the water/ice family

Y. Liu, Y. Pu and X. C. Zeng, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 92 DOI: 10.1039/D2NR05759J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements