Rational design of nanoporous catalysts for sustainable water remediation: mechanisms, challenges, and opportunities.

The elimination of refractory organic pollutants and toxic inorganic contaminants from aqueous media remains a critical challenge for practical water remediation. Nanoporous materials have emerged as promising platforms for aqueous environmental catalysis due to their highly tunable pore structures, surface functionalities, and active-site microenvironments. This review systematically summarizes the recent progress in the rational design and application of nanoporous materials for catalytic water treatment. We first provide an overview of mainstream nanoporous material systems, along with state-of-the-art synthetic strategies and advanced characterization techniques for structural and interfacial property analysis. The correlations between key material characteristics-including pore architecture, surface functionalization, and active site distribution-and core catalytic behaviors (i.e., pollutant adsorption, mass transfer, and interfacial catalytic conversion) are elaborated, with a specific focus on photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, and Fenton-like reaction systems. This article further highlights current advances in structure-performance regulation and identifies persistent research bottlenecks, including the lack of quantitative structure-performance relationships, insufficient catalytic stability in complex water matrices, and the challenges of integrating well-defined active sites into nanoporous frameworks. This review aims to offer fundamental insights and rational guidelines for the targeted design and optimization of high-performance nanoporous catalysts.