Porous liquids for gas capture, separation, and conversion: Narrowing the knowing-doing gap

As an emerging class of flowing liquid materials, porous liquids possess the properties of both porous solids and the fluidity of liquids. Even if the concept of porous liquids proposed in 2007 seemed hypothetical because of challenges in the synthesis, much progress has been made over the last few years with the examples of porous liquids demonstrated experimentally. This review highlights most of the work published to date in the field of gas capture, separation, and conversion by utilizing porous liquids. Great emphasis is put on the synthesis of porous liquids based on the pore generators, such as hollow inorganic nanomaterials, porous cages, and microporous frameworks. Particularly, special attention has been paid to the mechanism of synthetic strategies as well as an absorption-separation process at the molecular level. Ultimately, despite the great potential in porous liquids, we estimate the main remaining challenges in terms of synthesis methods, structure-property relationships and applications, etc.