Porous polymer monoliths: From their fundamental structure to analytical engineering applications

The primary need for advanced porous materials with well-understood and enhanced properties is identified for implementations in the fields of life science and engineering. The current contribution aims at developing a review perspective of the current generation of porous organic monolithic materials as hierarchically structured materials. This structure is derived from fundamental events occurring during preparation. Understanding the evolution of their porous structure from a free-radical cross-linking (co)polymerization process provides insight for an advanced understanding of structure-to-function relationships. A number of existing and emerging characterization techniques and cross-correlation to synthetic design of experiments are also of importance. Some exciting new approaches for creation of porous polymer monoliths are discussed, for example, living polymerizations and routes based on “click chemistry.” It has been further suggested that the new synthetic concepts must be accompanied with an advanced structural understanding of the materials to identify a desired step-change for their performance to be used in separations, catalysis, and extraction.