We herein report the construction of a new heteropore COF which consists of two different kinds of micropores with unprecedented shapes. It exists as hollow microspheres and exhibits an extremely high volatile iodine uptake (up to 481 wt%) by encapsulating iodine in the inner cavities and porous shells of the microspheres.

Porous liquids, a new porous material with fluidity, can be applied in numerous fields, such as gas storage and/or separation. In this work, the separation of binary gas mixtures CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 with porous liquids was examined by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The pure gas adsorption capacity was analyzed with different concentrations of porous liquids. The dependence of the separation effect of a gas mixture on the total pressure and temperature was investigated. Meanwhile, for both CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 systems, the adsorption and separation effects of porous liquids with a cage:solvent ratio of 1:12 are better than those of 1:91 and 1:170. The results of the spatial distribution function and/or trajectories indicated that porous liquids prefer CO2, leading to the location of CO2 in the channels formed in porous liquids. However, N2 and CH4 are hardly adsorbed into the bulk. The diffusion of gas molecules follows the order of CO2 > N2 (for CO2/N2) and CH4 > CO2 (for CO2/CH4) in the bulk and N2 > CO2 (for CO2/N2) and CH4 > CO2 (for CO2/CH4) at the interface of porous liquids. Upon increasing the concentrations of porous liquids, the working capacities of CO2 show small decreases in CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 systems, but the sorbent selection parameters are higher in pressure- and temperature-swing adsorption processes. The porous liquid with a cage:solvent ratio of 1:12 is more suitable for the separation of CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 systems than ratios of 1:91 and 1:170.

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Solution-phase self-assembly of two-dimensional (2D) networks with a high degree of internal order and long-range periodicity is a great challenge. Herein, we report a rational design to improve 2D self-assembly in water through amphiphilic modification of the building block. An amphiphilic tritopic molecule ( 1) is designed and synthesized by introducing three hydrophilic oligo(ethylene glycol) moieties and three hydrophobic hexyl chains. The assembly of 1 and cucurbit [8]uril (CB[8]) leads to the formation of a Janus 2D supramolecular organic framework (SOF), which further creates unique bilayer supramolecular networks and exhibits an unprecedentedly high degree of internal order and long-range periodicity. In contrast, the assembly of a nonamphiphilic analog (2) with CB[8] only generates a 2D SOF with a lower degree of internal order, suggesting that the inherent amphiphilicity of 1 plays a crucial role in improving its 2D self-assembly in aqueous phase.

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