Hybridization from Guest-Host Interactions Reduces the Thermal Conductivity of Metal-Organic Frameworks.

We experimentally and theoretically investigate the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of polycrystalline HKUST-1 metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) infiltrated with three guest molecules: tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ), 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4-TCNQ), and (cyclohexane-1,4-diylidene)dimalononitrile (H4-TCNQ). This allows for modification of the interaction strength between the guest and host, presenting an opportunity to study the fundamental atomic scale mechanisms of how guest molecules impact the thermal conductivity of large unit cell porous crystals. The thermal conductivities of the guest@MOF systems decrease significantly, by on average a factor of 4, for all infiltrated samples as compared to the uninfiltrated, pristine HKUST-1. This reduction in thermal conductivity goes in tandem with an increase in density of 38% and corresponding increase in heat capacity of ∼48%, defying conventional effective medium scaling of thermal properties of porous materials. We explore the origin of this reduction by experimentally investigating the guest molecules' effects on the mechanical properties of the MOF and performing atomistic simulations to elucidate the roles of the mass and bonding environments on thermal conductivity. The reduction in thermal conductivity can be ascribed to an increase in vibrational scattering introduced by extrinsic guest-MOF collisions as well as guest molecule-induced modifications to the intrinsic vibrational structure of the MOF in the form of hybridization of low frequency modes that is concomitant with an enhanced population of localized modes. The concentration of localized modes and resulting reduction in thermal conductivity do not seem to be significantly affected by the mass or bonding strength of the guest species.

Mechanisms of Heat Transfer in Porous Crystals Containing Adsorbed Gases: Applications to Metal-Organic Frameworks.

We have studied the mechanisms of heat transfer in a porous crystal-gas mixture system, motivated by the not insignificant challenge of quickly dissipating heat generated in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) due to gas adsorption. Our study reveals that the thermal conductance of the system (crystal and gas) is dominated by lattice thermal conductivity in the crystal, and that conductance is reduced as the concentration of gas in the pores increases. This mechanism was observed from classical molecular simulations of a monatomic gas in an idealized porous crystal structure. We show that the decreased conductivity associated with increased gas concentration is due to phonon scattering in the crystal due to interactions with gas molecules. Calculations of scattering rates for two phonon modes reveal that scattering of the lowest frequency mode scales linearly with gas density. This result suggests that the probability of a phonon-gas collision is simply proportional to the number of gas molecules in the pore.

Reversible Thermal Conductivity Switching Using Flexible Metal-Organic Frameworks.

The ability to control thermal transport is critical for the design of thermal rectifiers, logic gates, and transistors, although it remains a challenge to design materials that exhibit large changes in thermal conductivity with switching ratios suitable for practical applications. Here, we propose the use of flexible metal-organic frameworks, which can undergo significant structural changes in response to various stimuli, to achieve tunable switchable thermal conductivity. In particular, we use molecular dynamics simulations to show that the thermal conductivity of the flexible framework Fe(bdp) (bdp2- = 1,4-benzenedipyrazolate) becomes highly anisotropic upon transitioning from the expanded to the collapsed phase, with the conductivity decreasing by nearly an order of magnitude along the direction of compression. Our results add to a small but growing number of studies investigating metal-organic frameworks for thermal transport.

Correlated missing linker defects increase thermal conductivity in metal-organic framework UiO-66.

Thermal transport in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is an essential but frequently overlooked property. Among the small number of existing studies on thermal transport in MOFs, even fewer have considered explicitly the influence of defects. However, defects naturally exist in MOF crystals and are known to influence many of their material properties. In this work, we investigate the influence of both randomly and symmetrically distributed defects on the thermal conductivity of the MOF UiO-66. Two types of defects were examined: missing linker and missing cluster defects. For symmetrically distributed (i.e., spatially correlated) defects, we considered three experimentally resolved defect nanodomains of UiO-66 with underlying topologies of bcu, reo, and scu. We observed that both randomly distributed missing linker and missing cluster defects typically decrease thermal conductivity, as expected. However, we found that the spatial arrangement of defects can significantly impact thermal conductivity. In particular, the spatially correlated missing linker defect nanodomain (bcu topology) displayed an intriguing anisotropy, with the thermal conductivity along a particular direction being higher than that of the defect-free UiO-66. We attribute this unusual defect-induced increase in thermal conductivity to the removal of the linkers perpendicular to the primary direction of heat transport. These perpendicular linkers act as phonon scattering sources such that removing them increases thermal conductivity in that direction. Moreover, we also observed an increase in phonon group velocity, which might also contribute to the unusual increase. Overall, we show that structural defects could be an additional lever to tune the thermal conductivity of MOFs.

Influence of Missing Linker Defects on the Thermal Conductivity of Metal-Organic Framework HKUST-1.

Although metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising materials for gas storage and separation applications, the heat released during the exothermic adsorption process can potentially negatively impact their practical utility. Thermal transport in MOFs has not been widely studied, and among the relatively few reports on the topic, MOFs have either been assumed to be defect free or the presence of defects was not discussed. However, defects naturally exist in MOFs and can also be introduced intentionally. Here, we investigate the effect of missing linker defects on the thermal conductivity of HKUST-1 using molecular dynamics (MDs) simulation and the Green-Kubo method. We found that missing linker defects, even at low concentrations, substantially reduce the thermal conductivity of HKUST-1. If not taken into account, the presence of defects could lead to significant discrepancies between experimentally measured and computationally predicted thermal conductivities.

Enhanced Thermal Conductivity in a Diamine-Appended Metal-Organic Framework as a Result of Cooperative CO2 Adsorption.

Diamine-appended variants of the metal-organic framework M2(dobpdc) (M = Mg, Mn, Fe, Co, Zn; dobpdc4- = 4,4'-dioxidobiphenyl-3,3'-dicarboxylate) exhibit exceptional CO2 capture properties owing to a unique cooperative adsorption mechanism, and thus hold promise for use in the development of energy- and cost-efficient CO2 separations. Understanding the nature of thermal transport in these materials is essential for such practical applications, however, as temperature rises resulting from exothermic CO2 uptake could potentially offset the energy savings offered by such cooperative adsorbents. Here, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are employed in investigating thermal transport in bare and e-2-appended Zn2(dobpdc) (e-2 = N-ethylethylenediamine), both with and without CO2 as a guest. In the absence of CO2, the appended diamines function to enhance thermal conductivity in the ab-plane of e-2-Zn2(dobpdc) relative to the bare framework, as a result of noncovalent interactions between adjacent diamines that provide additional heat transfer pathways across the pore channel. Upon introduction of CO2, the thermal conductivity along the pore channel (the c-axis) increases due to the cooperative formation of metal-bound ammonium carbamates, which serve to create additional heat transfer pathways. In contrast, the thermal conductivity of the bare framework remains unchanged in the presence of zinc-bound CO2 but decreases in the presence of additional adsorbed CO2.

Observation of reduced thermal conductivity in a metal-organic framework due to the presence of adsorbates.

Whether the presence of adsorbates increases or decreases thermal conductivity in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has been an open question. Here we report observations of thermal transport in the metal-organic framework HKUST-1 in the presence of various liquid adsorbates: water, methanol, and ethanol. Experimental thermoreflectance measurements were performed on single crystals and thin films, and theoretical predictions were made using molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the thermal conductivity of HKUST-1 decreases by 40 - 80% depending on the adsorbate, a result that cannot be explained by effective medium approximations. Our findings demonstrate that adsorbates introduce additional phonon scattering in HKUST-1, which particularly shortens the lifetimes of low-frequency phonon modes. As a result, the system thermal conductivity is lowered to a greater extent than the increase expected by the creation of additional heat transfer channels. Finally, we show that thermal diffusivity is even more greatly reduced than thermal conductivity by adsorption.

Heat Flux for Many-Body Interactions: Corrections to LAMMPS.

The virial stress tensor-based instantaneous heat flux, which is used by LAMMPS, is only valid for the small subset of simulations that contain only pairwise interactions. For systems that contain many-body interactions using 3- or 4-body potentials, a more complete derivation is required. We have created a software patch to LAMMPS that implements the correct heat flux calculation approach for 3- and 4-body potentials, based on the derivation by Torii et al. ( J. Chem. Phys. 2008 , 128 , 044504 ) Using two example systems, the error in the uncorrected code for many-body potential heat flux is shown to be significant and reaches nearly 100% of the many-body potential heat flux for the systems we studied; hence, the error of the total heat flux calculation is proportional to the fraction of the total heat flux transferred through the many-body potentials. This error may have consequences for thermal conductivities calculated using the Green-Kubo method or any NEMD method that uses the instantaneous heat flux. We recommend that all researchers using LAMMPS for heat flux calculations where significant heat is transferred via the many-body potentials adopt the corrected code.

Transient Mass and Thermal Transport during Methane Adsorption into the Metal-Organic Framework HKUST-1.

Methane adsorption into the metal-organic framework (MOF) HKUST-1 and the resulting heat generation and dissipation are investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. Transient simulations reveal that thermal transport in the MOF occurs two orders of magnitude faster than gas diffusion. A large thermal resistance at the MOF-gas interface (equivalent to 127 nm of bulk HKUST-1), however, prevents fast release of the generated heat. The mass transport resistance at the MOF-gas interface is equivalent to 1 nm of bulk HKUST-1 and does not present a bottleneck in the adsorption process. These results provide important insights into the application of MOFs for gas storage applications.

Effect of pore size and shape on the thermal conductivity of metal-organic frameworks.

We investigate the effect of pore size and shape on the thermal conductivity of a series of idealized metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) containing adsorbed gas using molecular simulations. With no gas present, the thermal conductivity decreases with increasing pore size. In the presence of adsorbed gas, MOFs with smaller pores experience reduced thermal conductivity due to phonon scattering introduced by gas-crystal interactions. In contrast, for larger pores (>1.7 nm), the adsorbed gas does not significantly affect thermal conductivity. This difference is due to the decreased probability of gas-crystal collisions in larger pore structures. In contrast to MOFs with simple cubic pores, the thermal conductivity in structures with triangular and hexagonal pore channels exhibits significant anisotropy. For different pore geometries at the same atomic density, hexagonal channel MOFs have both the highest and lowest thermal conductivities, along and across the channel direction, respectively. In the triangular and hexagonal channeled structures, the presence of gas molecules has different effects on thermal conductivity along different crystallographic directions.