Nanoporous materials are omnipresent in our daily lives – in air purifiers, water dispensers, catalytic converters, chemical industries, plant matter, and anywhere filtration is needed. In addition to naturally existing structures like zeolites and diatomites, many artificial nanoporous materials such as activated carbons, molecular sieves and silica gel have found great use in a wide variety of applications. More recently, new nanoporous materials such as metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are being developed, having phenomenal structural diversity and exceptional promise in emerging applications where porosity tuning and precision positioning of functionalities are essential properties. These new advances have brought considerable interest in nanoscale pore engineering and material design, with the hopes that the new structures will play a pivotal role in solving critical issues such as combating global warming, building effective catalysts and providing energy efficient, target compound capture and decontamination.

In this issue, we invite contributions on novel concepts, ingenious designs and promising applications related to nanoporous materials, such as MOFs, covalent organic frameworks (COFs), zeolites, activated carbons, porous polymers, molecular sieves, mesoporous metals and oxides. The submitted works are expected to feature, but are not limited to, the following topics: 

• Design and synthesis of new nanoporous materials
• Exciting new applications based on nanoporous materials
• Unique methods and procedures
• State-of-the-art characterization techniques
• Modelling and simulation of nanoporous structures
• Commercialization and societal impact