Emerging porous materials for carbon dioxide adsorptive capture: progress and challenges

The rapidly increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a growing threat to human society. Selective capture of CO₂ remains challenging but of global importance. Recent work on porous materials demonstrated their potential and effectiveness in ameliorating the CO₂ problem. This review will summarize the progress in advanced porous materials, such as zeolites, metal–organic frameworks and porous organic polymers, with a tailored pore microenvironment and functionality for the selective capture of CO₂ over the past decade. The applications of porous adsorbents for CO₂ capture in important scenarios, such as flue streams, biogas and direct air capture, are presented. We discuss the design strategies for the custom-made structure and functionality of porous materials that have led to high-performance CO₂ capture with separation efficiency (e.g., high capacity, selectivity, molecular sieving, and moisture resistance) as well as efficient regeneration performance. In addition, this review also concludes with current existing challenges combined with potential directions for the future development of porous materials towards industrial CO₂ capture.