Highly controlled acetylene accommodation in a metal-organic microporous material.

Metal-organic microporous materials (MOMs) have attracted wide scientific attention owing to their unusual structure and properties, as well as commercial interest due to their potential applications in storage, separation and heterogeneous catalysis. One of the advantages of MOMs compared to other microporous materials, such as activated carbons, is their ability to exhibit a variety of pore surface properties such as hydrophilicity and chirality, as a result of the controlled incorporation of organic functional groups into the pore walls. This capability means that the pore surfaces of MOMs could be designed to adsorb specific molecules; but few design strategies for the adsorption of small molecules have been established so far. Here we report high levels of selective sorption of acetylene molecules as compared to a very similar molecule, carbon dioxide, onto the functionalized surface of a MOM. The acetylene molecules are held at a periodic distance from one another by hydrogen bonding between two non-coordinated oxygen atoms in the nanoscale pore wall of the MOM and the two hydrogen atoms of the acetylene molecule. This permits the stable storage of acetylene at a density 200 times the safe compression limit of free acetylene at room temperature.

Selective sorption of oxygen and nitric oxide by an electron-donating flexible porous coordination polymer.

Porous coordination polymers are materials formed from metal ions that are bridged together by organic linkers and that can combine two seemingly contradictory properties-crystallinity and flexibility. Porous coordination polymers can therefore create highly regular yet dynamic nanoporous domains that are particularly promising for sorption applications. Here, we describe the effective selective sorption of dioxygen and nitric oxide by a structurally and electronically dynamic porous coordination polymer built from zinc centres and tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) as a linker. In contrast to a variety of other gas molecules (C(2)H(2), Ar, CO(2), N(2) and CO), O(2) and NO are accommodated in its pores. This unprecedented preference arises from the concerted effect of the charge-transfer interaction between TCNQ and these guests, and the switchable gate opening and closing of the pores of the framework. This system provides further insight into the efficient recognition of small gas molecules.

Formation of a one-dimensional array of oxygen in a microporous metal-organic solid.

We report the direct observation of dioxygen molecules physisorbed in the nanochannels of a microporous copper coordination polymer by the MEM (maximum entropy method)/Rietveld method, using in situ high-resolution synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction measurements. The obtained MEM electron density revealed that van der Waals dimers of physisorbed O2 locate in the middle of nanochannels and form a one-dimensional ladder structure aligned to the host channel structure. The observed O-O stretching Raman band and magnetic susceptibilities are characteristic of the confined O2 molecules in one-dimensional nanochannels of CPL-1 (coordination polymer 1 with pillared layer structure).