The thermal transitions of confined polymers are important for the application of polymers in molecular scale devices and advanced nanotechnology. However, thermal transitions of ultrathin polymer assemblies confined in subnanometre spaces are poorly understood. In this study, we show that incorporation of polyethylene glycol (PEG) into nanochannels of porous coordination polymers (PCPs) enabled observation of thermal transitions of the chain assemblies by differential scanning calorimetry. The pore size and surface functionality of PCPs can be tailored to study the transition behaviour of confined polymers. The transition temperature of PEG in PCPs was determined by manipulating the pore size and the pore–polymer interactions. It is also striking that the transition temperature of the confined PEG decreased as the molecular weight of PEG increased.

We conduct grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations and a free-energy analysis for a simplified model of a stacked-layer porous coordination polymer to understand the gate phenomenon, which is a structural transition of a host framework induced by the adsorption of guest particles. Our calculations demonstrate that stabilization of the system due to the guest adsorption causes host deformation under thermodynamic equilibrium. We also investigate spontaneous transition behaviors (gate opening and closing under metastable conditions). The structural transition should occur when the required activation energy, which is determined using the free-energy analysis, becomes equal to the system energy fluctuation. To estimate the system energy fluctuation, we construct a kinetic transition model based on the transition state theory. In this model, the system energy fluctuation can be calculated by setting the adsorption time and transition domain size of the host framework. The model demonstrates that a smaller domain size results in a gate-opening transition at lower pressure. Furthermore, we reveal that the slope of the logarithm of the equilibrium structural transition pressure versus reciprocal temperature shows transition enthalpy, and that slopes of the gate-opening and -closing transition pressures versus reciprocal temperature show activation enthalpies.

No abstract

Tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) components are separated by fractional distillation, and the structure of each fraction is established using spectroscopic methods. Then, solid sorbents incorporating these components are prepared, and the capacities and rates of CO2 absorption of the sorbents are evaluated to elucidate how the molecular structure affects the absorption performance.

Porous coordination polymers (PCPs) with soft frameworks show a gate phenomenon consisting of an abrupt structural transition induced by adsorption of guest molecules. To understand the dependence of the gating behavior on the host framework structure, we conduct grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations and a free-energy analysis of a simplified model of a stacked-layer PCP. The interlayer width of the rigid layers composing the simplified model can be changed by guest adsorption and by varying the initial interlayer width h0, which is controlled by the length of pillars between the layers. We introduce three types of gating behavior, one-step gating, filling and gating, and double gating, which depend on three parameters: the initial interlayer width h0; the interaction parameter ɛss, which determines the host-guest framework interaction as well as the inter-framework interaction; and the elastic modulus of the framework, which depends on the stiffness of the pillars. We show that the one-step gating and the filling and gating behaviors depend strongly on h0 rather than on ɛss, and thus a transformation from filling and gating to double gating can be achieved by reducing the stiffness of the host framework. This study should be a guideline for controlling the gating pressure of PCPs by modifying their chemical components.