Porous materials via nanocasting procedures: innovative materials and learning about soft-matter organization.

Nanocasting, the 3D-transformation of self-assembled organic nanostructures into hollow inorganic replicas under preservation of fine structural details has recently turned out to be a versatile tool, both for the synthesis of porous media with new pore topology as well as for the characterization of the assembled structures themselves. This review gives a review on recent work describing the potential and restrictions of nanocasting using surfactants, polymers, colloids as well as supramolecular tectons as porogens.