This is the direct continuity of a recent paper (here) where we came up with new topologies, theoretically. Since then, we’ve been busy in the lab making them real! One of them, derived from sodalite net, gave us quite some success, and we could make more than 20 new structures with the same topological backbone.
But… That was not straight forward: we had to employ tricks to alter the angles between some of the building blocks, to prevent the formation of pentagonal windows and promote either square or hexagonal windows to assemble the desired structures. With the talent of Marina and Alex on the MOF synthesis side, but also Aslam and Prakash on the ligand synthesis (and the rest of the team, of course), we managed to make that dream true. A fully tunable platform, with porosity ranging from ultramicroporous, promising for gas separation, up to some of the most porous MOFs to date, with the highest oxygen storage capacity ever achieved! The two extreme sides of gas related applications within a single platform!
That is the newest we have so far in stock, and it just got published in nature synthesis!
Abstract: Building blocks with low connectivity and no embedded directionality are prone to polymorphism, as demonstrated by the diversity of 4-connected zeolitic nets (>250). As a result, their deployment for design in reticular and isoreticular chemistries remains a challenge. However, the ability to control geometrical peculiarities offers potential to deviate from the assembly of default structures. Here we report the face-directed assembly of >20 isoreticular zeolite-like metal–organic frameworks (ZMOFs) by using polytopic expanding and tightening centring structure-directing agents (cSDAs). The cSDAs are selected with the appropriate geometrical coding information to alter and control the orientation of adjacent supermolecular building blocks. The ZMOFs have an underlying sodalite (sod) topology that is remarkably suited for the rational assembly of multinary materials. In addition to a variety of metal cations (In, Fe, Co and Ni), a diverse range of cSDAs (di-, tri-, tetra-, hexa-, pyridyl or imidazole) are used and combined. Our approach enables isoreticular possibilities at both extremities of the porous materials spectrum: In-sod-ZMOF-102 exhibits small pore aperture suitable for efficient separation, while Fe-sod-ZMOF-320 with 48-Å-wide mesopores exhibits high hydrogen uptake, methane storage working capacity and a high gravimetric working capacity for oxygen.
read the article here
a journey to porous crystals, topology & more 