Recent Developments in NMR Studies of Aluminophosphates

Aluminophosphate materials include both crystalline and amorphous solids. Microporous crystalline aluminophosphate solids are used for important applications, such as adsorption, gas separation and heterogeneous catalysis. Aluminophosphate glasses are materials employed for technologies, such as high-power laser, sealing glass and radioactive waste storage. Many of their physical and chemical properties (reactivity, adsorption capacity, glass transition, viscosity,...) depend on their atomic-level structure. As a local characterization technique, solid-state NMR provides unique information on the short-and medium-range structures and on motions over timescales spanning many orders of magnitude. In this review, we survey basic and advanced NMR methods, which have been developed and applied for the characterization of aluminophosphate materials. Notably, we discuss NMR techniques to probe connectivities and proximities between identical or distinct nuclei. Finally, we discuss the information on the structure and dynamics provided by solid-state NMR for both crystalline and amorphous aluminophosphate materials.