Integrated nanocatalysts with mesoporous silica/silicate and microporous MOF materials

Integrated nanocatalysts (INCs) with multicomponent and hierarchically complex structures have recently drawn extensive research attention in terms of their fundamental sciences and industrial applications. To date, many innovative strategies have been established for the synthesis of INCs by thoughtful design. The aim of this review is to highlight the state-of-the-art of INCs with different porous materials for catalyst technology and heterogeneous catalysis. In the first part of this review, we briefly introduce catalytic active components (mainly metal, metal oxide, and hybrid nanoparticles) that are commonly used in INCs. Combining such active components with various porous materials provides us a huge array of architectural designs for INCs that can be used in chemical reactions. In choosing host materials for INCs, we focus on the mesoporous siliceous materials (viz., silica and metal silicates) and microporous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), since they represent the two most attractive classes of porous materials known today. In the latter parts of this article, therefore, we review the recent developments of INCs which comprise these mesoporous and microporous solids with special emphasis on their roles as supports, encapsulating shells, and metal sources. Examples described here are drawn from our group and others; future research directions are also discussed.