What do you imagine to hear the term "porous" materials? They are solids that retain small cavities called "pores". With closer observation, you will find a regular arrangement of those pores, or a seemingly random arrangement of pores that contains hidden regularities. Porous materials found in nature include diatomaceous earth, charcoal, pumice, and zeolite that are known to efficiently absorb humidity and eliminate odor. Porous materials have very large surface area which provides a large number of reaction sites per volume. They are also highly lightweight due to their numerous cavities occupying a large fraction of the material.
　Nakanishi & Hasegawa Lab makes use of the sol-gel reaction, a liquid phase process, to study a wide range of porous materials from inorganic ceramics and organic polymers to organic-inorganic hybrids. Lab members' interests extend widely from the precise control of pore structures to application to everyday products. Our interview covered what all this implies and how they are fascinated by the research on porous materials.

(Interview, June 2023, IMaSS Publicity Committee)