Water Adsorption in Soft and Heterogeneous Nanopores

Abstract: Liquids under confinement differ in behavior from their bulk counterparts and can acquire properties that are specific to the confined phase and linked to the nature and structure of the host matrix. While confined liquid water is not a new topic of research, the past few years have seen a series of intriguing novel features for water inside nanoscale pores. These unusual properties arise from the very specific nature of nanoporous materials: termed "soft porous crystals", they combine large-scale flexibility with a heterogeneous internal surface. This creates a rich diversity of behavior for the adsorbed water, and the combination of different experimental characterization techniques along with computational chemistry at various scales is necessary to understand the phenomena observed, and their microscopic origins. The range of systems of interest span the whole chemical range, from the inorganic (zeolites, imogolites) to the organic (microporous carbons, graphene and its derivatives) and even encompass the hybrid organic--inorganic systems (such as metal--organic frameworks).