Porous materials and supercritical fluids

Porous materials are used in a wide variety of applications, including catalysis, chemical separation, and tissue engineering. The synthesis and processing of these materials is frequently solvent intensive. In addition to reducing organic solvent emissions, supercritical fluids offer a number of specific physical, chemical, and toxicological advantages as alternative solvents for the production of functional porous materials. The figure shows an electron image of a porous polyacrylate produced by the templating of a concentrated CO2-in-water emulsion-a process that would otherwise be highly solvent intensive.