Toward a New Description of the Internal Structure of Amorphous Porous Carbons
Maurizio Cossi
University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy
Video: https://univ-nantes-fr.zoom.us/j/84576001578?pwd=2yHtI3N2g2iNumDaXqYtyBMt4azR6A.1
Adsorption processes in nanoporous materials are of great importance in a number of fields, including gas storage, separation, and purification; sensing; heterogeneous and hybrid catalysis; and others. Knowledge of the material’s structure and its relationship to adsorbent-adsorbate interactions strongly influences the interpretation of experimental results and the design of new, more efficient adsorbents.
The description of the porous volume distributions and the measurement of specific surface areas are extremely important in this context.
We will briefly review the modern techniques used to characterize the porous structure of various materials (activated carbons, zeolites, MOFs, etc.), along with the most recent theoretical methods that can support experimental characterization. In particular, we will present the newest computational approach, PoLA (Porosity Local Analysis), designed to describe the porous volume and surface in both atomistic models and real samples, and to predict adsorption properties.
[1] A. Zoccante et al., ACS Omega 2025, 10, 31623
[2] M. Cossi et al., *Carbon 2026*, 257, 121713
