Nanogrowth is an international project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EPSRC to investigate the fundamental details of crystal growth in nanoporous materials such as zeolites. The group spans 4 countries, 9 Academic Institutions and industry in Europe and USA. We propose the most fundamental, ambitious and concerted multi-disciplanary investigation into the undestanding of crystal growth and rational design of open-framework materials yet attempted. We believe the findings from this study will mark a major leap forward into our understanding of crystal growth and our ability to exploit our understanding to produce new materials with unique properties and applications. Extensive studies on the synthesis of nanoporous materials have been carried out. However, the majority of this synthetic work has been aimed primarily at either:

(i) the discovery of new structures

(ii) modification or improvement of existing materials

(iii) process development to enable such materials to be produced successfully on a large scale

The effort so far on synthesis and crystallisation mechanism has yielded many positive results but also many unanswered questions, for example:

(i) the detailed mechanism of crystal growth

(ii) the identity of growth species and

(iii) whether nanocrystal growth occurs by addition or aggregation

This research involves the application of a powerful set of complementary techniques to the study of crystal growth of open-framework materials comprising: atomic force microscopy, high resolution transmission and scanning electron microscopies, in-situ NMR with enhanced data processing, mass spectrometry and computational methods. A substantially better understanding of the crystal growth process is likely to yield important economic benefits, for example, better process control, increased efficiency in reagent usage, improved reproducibility and the capacity to modify or tailor products for specific applications.

Perhaps most important of all would be the ability to identify successful synthetic routes to as-yet unknown structures and compositions which have been predicted on theoretical grounds to have beneficial characteristics. Such a step forward to a new level of primary understanding would open the way to innovative applications in chemistry, physics (ordered arrays) and biomaterials.