Industrial chemistry worth billions of dollars unfolds within the pores of crystal catalysts, and it’s the size of those pores that determines what particular reactions can occur. Now, chemists have devised a new approach that creates crystalline material with some of the largest pores yet.
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Most methods for making porous crystals include a catch: Achieving larger pore sizes comes at the expense of the ordered structure. For many applications, it’s important to know the precise position of every atom, which is possible in crystals but not in disordered structures, notes Xiaodong Zou, a physicist and chemist at Stockholm University.