Metal-organic frameworks are promising materials for energy-efficient gas separations, but little is known about the diffusion of adsorbates in materials featuring one-dimensional porosity at the nanoscale. An understanding of the interplay between framework structure and gas diffusion is crucial for the practical application of these materials as adsorbents or in mixed-matrix membranes, since the rate of gas diffusion within the adsorbent pores impacts the required size (and therefore cost) of the adsorbent column or membrane. Here, we investigate the diffusion of CO within the pores of Zn(dobpdc) (dobpdc = 4,4'-dioxidobiphenyl-3,3'-dicarboxylate) using pulsed field gradient (PFG) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The residual chemical shift anisotropy for pore-confined CO allows PFG NMR measurements of self-diffusion in different crystallographic directions, and our analysis of the entire NMR line shape as a function of the applied field gradient provides a precise determination of the self-diffusion coefficients. In addition to observing CO diffusion through the channels parallel to the crystallographic c axis (self-diffusion coefficient D = (5.8 ± 0.1) × 10 m s at a pressure of 625 mbar CO), we unexpectedly find that CO is also able to diffuse between the hexagonal channels in the crystallographic ab plane (D = (1.9 ± 0.2) × 10 m s), despite the walls of these channels appearing impermeable by single-crystal X-ray crystallography and flexible lattice MD simulations. Observation of such unexpected diffusion in the ab plane suggests the presence of defects that enable effective multidimensional CO transport in a metal-organic framework with nominally one-dimensional porosity.

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) methods have been routinely used for the characterization of both the structure and the dynamics of metal organic frameworks (MOFs), a collection of porous media investigated for potential applications in carbon capture technologies, selective separation of small molecules, and catalysis.

A systematic evaluation of the effect of polymer matrix molecular weight on the coarsening kinetics of uniformly dispersed polystyrene-grafted gold nanoparticles is presented. Particle coarsening is found to proceed via three stages (i.e., atomic-diffusion-based Ostwald ripening (OR), particle-migration-based collision-coalescence, and the subsequent reshaping of particle assemblies). The relative significance of each stage and hence the evolution of particle size and shape have been found to depend sensitively upon time, temperature, and the molecular weight of the host polymer. At temperatures close to the matrix glass-transition temperature, Ostwald ripening has been observed to be dominant on all experimental timescales. With increasing annealing temperature, collision coalescence becomes the dominant mode of coarsening, leading to rapid particle growth. The onset of the latter process is found to be increasingly delayed with increasing molecular weight of the polymer host. Particle coalescence is observed to proceed via two fundamental modes (i.e., diffusion-limited aggregation and growth resulting in the formation of fractal particle clusters and the subsequent recrystallization into more spherical monolithic aggregate structures). Interestingly, particle coarsening in high-molecular-weight matrix polymers is found to proceed significantly faster than predicted on the basis of the bulk polymer viscosity; this acceleration is interpreted to be a consequence of the network characteristics of high-molecular-weight polymers by analogy to the phenomenon of nanoviscosity that has been reported in the context of nanoparticle diffusion within high-molecular-weight polymers.

We assign 1 H and 13 C NMR resonances emanating from acetone, methanol, and cyclohexane adsorbed inside the pores of UiO-66(Zr). These results are informed by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which probe the role of two competing effects inside of the pore environment: (i) nucleus independent chemical shifts (NICSs) generated by ring currents in conjugated linkers and (ii) small molecule coordination to the metal-oxyhydroxy cluster. These interactions are found to perturb the chemical shift of in-pore adsorbate relative to ex-pore adsorbate (which resides in spaces between the MOF particles). Changes in self-solvation upon adsorption may also perturb the chemical shift. Our results indicate that cyclohexane preferentially adsorbs in the tetrahedral pores of UiO-66(Zr), while acetone and methanol adsorb at the Zr−OH moieties on the metal-oxyhydroxy clusters in a more complex fashion. This method may be used to probe molecular adsorption sites and material void saturation with selected adsorbates, and with further development may eventually be used to trace in-pore chemistry of MOF materials.

We combined nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to study xylene behavior in MOF-5, probing the effects of adsorbate geometry in a weakly interacting model isotropic metalorganic framework (MOF) system. We employed NMR diffusometry and relaxometry techniques at low field (13 MHz) to quantify the self-diffusion coefficients (D s ) and the longitudinal relaxation times (T 1 ) of xylenes in MOF-5 as a function of temperature at saturated loading for each xylene. These experiments reveal the translational motion activation energies to be 15.3, 19.7, and 21.2 kJ mol −1 and the rotational activation energies to be 47.26, 12.88, and 11.55 for the (p-,m-,o-) xylene isomers respectively. Paraxylene exhibits faster translational motion, yet shows four times the activation energy barrier for rotational motion vis-à-vis the other isomers. MD simulations performed on these model systems corroborate the findings for paraxylene and suggest that paraxylene has the a lower free energy barrier for hopping away from its binding sites. These simulations show that paraxylene has the slowest rotational motion in the plane of the xylene molecule while it actually has the fastest out-of-plane rotational motion.