As a cleaner, cheaper, and more globally evenly distributed fuel, natural gas has considerable environmental, economic, and political advantages over petroleum as a source of energy for the transportation sector. Despite these benefits, its low volumetric energy density at ambient temperature and pressure presents substantial challenges, particularly for light-duty vehicles with little space available for on-board fuel storage. Adsorbed natural gas systems have the potential to store high densities of methane (CH4, the principal component of natural gas) within a porous material at ambient temperature and moderate pressures. Although activated carbons, zeolites, and metal-organic frameworks have been investigated extensively for CH4 storage, there are practical challenges involved in designing systems with high capacities and in managing the thermal fluctuations associated with adsorbing and desorbing gas from the adsorbent. Here, we use a reversible phase transition in a metal-organic framework to maximize the deliverable capacity of CH4 while also providing internal heat management during adsorption and desorption. In particular, the flexible compounds Fe(bdp) and Co(bdp) (bdp(2-) = 1,4-benzenedipyrazolate) are shown to undergo a structural phase transition in response to specific CH4 pressures, resulting in adsorption and desorption isotherms that feature a sharp 'step'. Such behaviour enables greater storage capacities than have been achieved for classical adsorbents, while also reducing the amount of heat released during adsorption and the impact of cooling during desorption. The pressure and energy associated with the phase transition can be tuned either chemically or by application of mechanical pressure.

The widespread deployment of carbon capture and sequestration as a climate change mitigation strategy could be facilitated by the development of more energy-efficient adsorbents. Diamine-appended metal-organic frameworks of the type diamine-M2(dobpdc) (M = Mg, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Zn; dobpdc 4− = 4,4′-dioxidobiphenyl-3,3′-dicarboxylate) have shown promise for carbon capture applications, although questions remain regarding the molecular mechanisms of CO2 uptake in these materials. Here, we leverage the crystallinity and tunability of this class of frameworks to perform a comprehensive study of CO2 chemisorption. Using multinuclear nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy experiments and van der Waals-corrected density functional theory (DFT) calculations for thirteen diamine-M2(dobpdc) variants, we demonstrate that the canonical CO2 chemisorption products-ammonium carbamate chains and carbamic acid pairs-can be readily distinguished, and that ammonium carbamate chain formation dominates for diamine-Mg2(dobpdc) materials. In addition, we elucidate a new chemisorption mechanism in the material dmpn-Mg2(dobpdc) (dmpn = 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-diaminopropane), which involves formation of a 1:1 mixture of ammonium carbamate and carbamic acid and accounts for the unusual adsorption properties of this material. Finally, we show that the presence of water plays an important role in directing the mechanisms for CO2 uptake in diamine-M2(dobpdc) materials. Overall, our combined NMR and DFT approach enables a thorough depiction and understanding of CO2 adsorption within diamine-M2(dobpdc) compounds, which may aid similar studies in other amine-functionalized adsorbents in the future. Structure files generated by DFT calculations with the PBE functional and the D3 vdW correction (CIF).

Cooperative binding, whereby an initial binding event facilitates the uptake of additional substrate molecules, is common in biological systems such as haemoglobin. It was recently shown that porous solids that exhibit cooperative binding have substantial energetic benefits over traditional adsorbents, but few guidelines currently exist for the design of such materials. In principle, metal-organic frameworks that contain coordinatively unsaturated metal centres could act as both selective and cooperative adsorbents if guest binding at one site were to trigger an electronic transformation that subsequently altered the binding properties at neighbouring metal sites. Here we illustrate this concept through the selective adsorption of carbon monoxide (CO) in a series of metal-organic frameworks featuring coordinatively unsaturated iron(ii) sites. Functioning via a mechanism by which neighbouring iron(ii) sites undergo a spin-state transition above a threshold CO pressure, these materials exhibit large CO separation capacities with only small changes in temperature. The very low regeneration energies that result may enable more efficient Fischer-Tropsch conversions and extraction of CO from industrial waste feeds, which currently underutilize this versatile carbon synthon. The electronic basis for the cooperative adsorption demonstrated here could provide a general strategy for designing efficient and selective adsorbents suitable for various separations.

Metal-organic frameworks are of interest for use in a variety of electrochemical and electronic applications, although a detailed understanding of their charge transport behavior, which is of critical importance for enhancing electronic conductivities, remains limited. Herein, we report isolation of the mixed-valence framework materials, Fe(tri)(BF) (tri = 1,2,3-triazolate; x = 0.09, 0.22, and 0.33), obtained from the stoichiometric chemical oxidation of the poorly conductive iron(II) framework Fe(tri), and find that the conductivity increases dramatically with iron oxidation level. Notably, the most oxidized variant, Fe(tri)(BF), displays a room-temperature conductivity of 0.3(1) S/cm, which represents an increase of 8 orders of magnitude from that of the parent material and is one of the highest conductivity values reported among three-dimensional metal-organic frameworks. Detailed characterization of Fe(tri) and the Fe(tri)(BF) materials via powder X-ray diffraction, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and IR and UV-vis-NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopies reveals that the high conductivity arises from intervalence charge transfer between mixed-valence low-spin Fe centers. Further, Mössbauer spectroscopy indicates the presence of a valence-delocalized Fe species in Fe(tri)(BF) at 290 K, one of the first such observations for a metal-organic framework. The electronic structure of valence-pure Fe(tri) and the charge transport mechanism and electronic structure of mixed-valence Fe(tri)(BF) frameworks are discussed in detail.

Metal–organic frameworks are among the most promising materials for industrial gas separations, including the removal of carbon dioxide from natural gas, although substantial improvements in adsorption selectivity are still sought. Herein, we use equilibrium adsorption experiments to demonstrate that the flexible metal–organic framework Co­(bdp) (bdp2– = 1,4-benzene­dipyrazolate) exhibits a large CO2 adsorption capacity and approaches complete exclusion of CH4 under 50:50 mixtures of the two gases, leading to outstanding CO2/CH4 selectivity under these conditions. In situ powder X-ray diffraction data indicate that this selectivity arises from reversible guest templating, in which the framework expands to form a CO2 clathrate and then collapses to the nontemplated phase upon desorption. Under an atmosphere dominated by CH4, Co­(bdp) adsorbs minor amounts of CH4 along with CO2, highlighting the importance of studying all relevant pressure and composition ranges via multicomponent measurements when examining mixed-gas selectivity in structurally flexible materials. Altogether, these results show that Co­(bdp) may be a promising CO2/CH4 separation material and provide insights for the further study of flexible adsorbents for gas separations.

Metal-organic frameworks are a new class of heterogeneous catalysts in which molecular-level control over both the immediate and long-range chemical environment surrounding a catalytic center can be readily achieved. Here, the oxidation of cyclohexane to cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone is used as a model reaction to investigate the effect of a hydrophobic pore environment on product selectivity and catalyst stability in a series of iron-based frameworks. Specifically, expanded analogues of Fe(dobdc) (dobdc = 2,5-dioxido-1,4-benzenedicarboxylate) were synthesized and evaluated, including the biphenyl derivative Fe(dobpdc) (Hdobpdc = 4,4'-dihydroxy-[1,1'-biphenyl]-3,3'-dicarboxylic acid), the terphenyl derivative Fe(dotpdc) (Hdotpdc = 4,4″-dihydroxy-[1,1':4',1″-terphenyl]-3,3″-dicarboxylic acid), and three modified terphenyl derivatives in which the central ring is replaced with tetrafluoro-, tetramethyl-, or di-tert-butylaryl groups. Within these five materials, a remarkable 3-fold enhancement of the alcohol:ketone (A:K) ratio and an order of magnitude increase in turnover number are achieved by simply altering the framework pore diameter and installing nonpolar functional groups near the iron site. Mössbauer spectroscopy, kinetic isotope effect, and gas adsorption measurements reveal that variations in the A:K selectivities arise from differences in the cyclohexane adsorption enthalpies of these frameworks, which become more favorable as the number of hydrophobic residues and thus van der Waals interactions increase.

Selective nitrogen adsorption via backbonding in a metal-organic framework with exposed vanadium sites. # These authors contributed equally to this work Industrial processes prominently feature π-acidic gases, and an adsorbent capable of selectively interacting with these molecules could enable a number of important chemical separations 1-4 . In nature, enzymes, and correspondingly their synthetic analogues, use accessible, reducing metal centers to bind and even activate weakly π-acidic species such as N 2 through backbonding interactions 5-7 , and incorporation of similar moieties into a porous material should give rise to a new mechanism of adsorption for these gaseous substrates 8 .However, synthetic challenges have prevented realization of such a material. Here, we report a metal-organic framework featuring exposed vanadium(II) centers with an electronic configuration and 3d-orbital energies conducive to the back-donation of electron density to weak π-acids, thereby enabling highly selective adsorption. This new adsorption mechanism, together with the presence of a high concentration of available adsorption sites, results in record N 2 capacities and selectivities for the removal of N 2 from mixtures with CH 4 , while further enabling the separation of olefins from paraffins at elevated temperatures.Ultimately, incorporating such π-basic metal centers into tunable porous materials offers a new handle for capturing and activating key molecular species within next-generation adsorbents.The implementation of adsorbent-based technology stands as a promising route toward mitigating the high energy and emission costs associated with current industrial chemical The synthesis of V 2 Cl 2.8 (

Metal-organic frameworks that display step-shaped adsorption profiles arising from discrete pressure-induced phase changes are promising materials for applications in both high-capacity gas storage and energy-efficient gas separations. The thorough investigation of such materials through chemical diversification, gas adsorption measurements, and in situ structural characterization is therefore crucial for broadening their utility. We examine a series of isoreticular, flexible zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) of the type M(bim) 2 (SOD; M = Zn (ZIF-7), Co (ZIF-9), Cd (CdIF-13); bim -= benzimidazolate), and elucidate the effects of metal substitution on the pressure-responsive phase changes and the resulting CO 2 and CH 4 step positions, pre-step uptakes, and step capacities. Using ZIF-7 as a benchmark, we reexamine the poorly understood structural transition responsible for its adsorption steps and, through high-pressure adsorption measurements, verify that it displays a step in its CH 4 adsorption isotherms. The ZIF-9 material is shown to undergo an analogous phase change, yielding adsorption steps for CO 2 and CH 4 with similar profiles and capacities to ZIF-7, but with shifted threshold pressures. Further, the Cd 2+ analogue CdIF-13 is reported here for the first time, and shown to display adsorption behavior distinct from both ZIF-7 and ZIF-9, with negligible pre-step adsorption, a ~50% increase in CO 2 and CH 4 capacity, and dramatically higher threshold adsorption pressures. Remarkably, a single-crystal-to-singlecrystal phase change to a pore-gated phase is also achieved with CdIF-13, providing insight into the phase change that yields step-shaped adsorption in these flexible ZIFs. Finally, we show that the endothermic phase change of these frameworks provides intrinsic heat management during gas adsorption.