Specialized computational chemistry packages have permanently reshaped the landscape of chemical and materials science by providing tools to support and guide experimental efforts and for the prediction of atomistic and electronic properties. In this regard, electronic structure packages have played a special role by using first-principle-driven methodologies to model complex chemical and materials processes. Over the past few decades, the rapid development of computing technologies and the tremendous increase in computational power have offered a unique chance to study complex transformations using sophisticated and predictive many-body techniques that describe correlated behavior of electrons in molecular and condensed phase systems at different levels of theory. In enabling these simulations, novel parallel algorithms have been able to take advantage of computational resources to address the polynomial scaling of electronic structure methods. In this paper, we briefly review the NWChem computational chemistry suite, including its history, design principles, parallel tools, current capabilities, outreach, and outlook.

Facile preparation of microporous conjugated polycarbazoles via carbazole-based oxidative coupling polymerization is reported. The process to form the polymer network has cost-effective advantages such as using a cheap catalyst, mild reaction conditions, and requiring a single monomer. Because no other functional groups such as halo groups, boric acid, and alkyne are required for coupling polymerization, properties derived from monomers are likely to be fully retained and structures of final polymers are easier to characterize. A series of microporous conjugated polycarbazoles (CPOP-2-7) with permanent porosity are synthesized using versatile carbazolyl-bearing 2D and 3D conjugated core structures with non-planar rigid conformation as building units. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller specific surface area values for these porous materials vary between 510 and 1430 m(2) g(-1) . The dominant pore sizes of the polymers based on the different building blocks are located between 0.59 and 0.66 nm. Gas (H2 and CO2 ) adsorption isotherms show that CPOP-7 exhibits the best uptake capacity for hydrogen (1.51 wt% at 1.0 bar and 77 K) and carbon dioxide (13.2 wt% at 1.0 bar and 273 K) among the obtained polymers. Furthermore, its high CH4 /N2 and CO2 /N2 adsorption selectivity gives polymer CPOP-7 potential application in gas separation.

Photocatalytic hydrogen production has been considered a promising approach to obtain green hydrogen energy. Crystalline porous materials have arisen as key photocatalysts for efficient hydrogen production. Here, we report a strategy to in situ photodeposit platinum clusters as cocatalyst on a covalent organic framework, which makes it an efficient photocatalyst for light-driven hydrogen evolution. Periodically dispersed adsorption sites of platinum species are constructed by introducing adjacent hydroxyl group and imine-N in the region of the covalent organic framework structural unit where photogenerated electrons converge, leading to the in situ reduction of the adsorbed platinum species into metal clusters by photogenerated electrons. The widespread platinum clusters on the covalent organic framework expose large active surface and greatly facilitate the electron transfer, finally contributing to a high photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate of 42432 μmol g−1 h−1 at 1 wt% platinum loading. This work provides a direction for structural design on covalent organic frameworks to precisely manipulate cocatalyst morphologies and positions at the atomic level for developing efficient photocatalysts.

We demonstrate the synthesis of two triptycene-based microporous poly(benzimidazole) networks through condensation of triptycene-hexone with dialdehyde in refluxing glacial acetic acid containing ammonium acetate. The benzimidazole-linkage in the resulting polymers is confirmed by Fourier transform infrared and solid-state 13 C CP/MAS NMR spectroscopy. The spindle-shaped morphology of the obtained polymers was also observed through scanning electron microscopy. The materials, with Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) specific surface area over 600 m 2 g À1 , possess a good hydrogen storage capacity (up to 1.57 wt% at 77 K and 1.0 bar) and a high carbon dioxide uptake (up to 14.0 wt% at 273 K and 1.0 bar). These excellent performances would probably make them promising candidates for gas-selective adsorption, heterogeneous catalysis, and proton-exchange membrane fuel cells.