RESUMEN
Investigation of guest diffusion in porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is of major importance, because many porosity-related properties of MOFs are influenced by diffusion effects. The diffusion of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) in the MOF MIL-53-NH2 (Al) was investigated through pulsed-field-gradient (PFG) NMR spectroscopy. The microporous material was synthesized in small crystallites (under 500â nm), which agglomerated in a large range of particle sizes (from hundreds of nanometers to tens of micrometers), giving a morphologically very heterogeneous sample. No special agglomeration pattern could be observed, which makes a PFG NMR investigation very challenging, yet it represents a realistic situation for the diffusion of guest molecules in porous materials. We were able to distinguish between two diffusion regimes existing in parallel with each other over the total range from 15 to 200â ms of observation times as accessible in the experiments: In the large crystal agglomerates (diameters above 20â µm), guest movement was found to be subdiffusive, with a time exponent κ =0.8 (rather than one as for normal diffusion). Guest diffusion in the remaining, smaller host particles followed the pattern of normal diffusion within a bed of spheres of impenetrable external surfaces, with a size distribution in good agreement with that of the material under study. Diffusion in a rather complex system could thus be referred to a two-region model with new potentials for application to systems of intricate topology.
RESUMEN
α-Peptoids, or N-substituted glycine oligomers, are an important class of peptidomimetic foldamers with proteolytic stability. Nevertheless, the presence of cis/trans-amide bond conformers, which contribute to the high flexibility of α-peptoids, is considered as a major drawback. A modified peptoid backbone with an improved control of the amide bond geometry could therefore help to overcome this limitation. Herein, we have performed the first thorough analysis of the folding propensities of α-aminoxy peptoids (or N-substituted 2-aminoxyacetic acid oligomers). To this end, the amide bond geometry and the conformational properties of a series of model α-aminoxy peptoids were investigated by using 1D and 2D NMR experiments, X-ray crystallography, natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis, circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealing a unique preference for cis-amide bonds even in the absence of cis-directing side chains. The conformational analysis based on the MD simulations revealed that α-aminoxy peptoids can adopt helical conformations that can mimic the spatial arrangement of peptide side chains in a canonical α-helix. Given their ease of synthesis and conformational properties, α-aminoxy peptoids represent a new member of the peptoid family capable of controlling the amide isomerism while maintaining the potential for side-chain diversity.