Salt-templated mesoporous solids comprised of interlinked polyoxovanadate clusters.

The utility of molten salts has been demonstrated in the synthesis of the first family of mesoporous salt-inclusion solids featuring [V(4)O(16)] and [V(5)O(17)] polyoxovanadate (POV) units interlinked by As(5+) cations. Despite a high-temperature synthesis, these new solids exhibit unusually porous ( approximately 2-nm-diameter) vanadium arsenate frameworks. Disordered metal chloride salts reside inside the pores, leading to relatively large voids (up to approximately 7.2% of the unit cell volume), which were confirmed by surface area (SA) measurements of the as-prepared polycrystalline samples ( approximately 90-110 m(2)/g). Given the potential utility of porous POV-containing materials, efforts were made to study changes in the SAs (showing approximately 35-70% increases) upon salt removal and redox chemistry.