Computational development of the nanoporous materials genome

Abstract

H1 Abstract.There is currently a large push towards big data and data mining in materials research to accelerate discovery. Zeolites, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and other related crystalline porous materials are not immune to this recent phenomenon, as evidenced by the proliferation of porous structure databases and computational gas adsorption screening studies over the past decade. The strive to identify the best materials for a variety of gas separation and storage applications has not only led to collections of thousands of synthesised structures, but the development of hypothetical material building algorithms.The materials databases assembled with these algorithms expand greatly on the range of complex pore structures that have been synthesised, with the rationale that we have discovered only a small fraction of realisable structures and expanding upon these will accelerate rational design. In this review, we highlight some of the methods developed to build these databases, and some of the important outcomes resulting from large-scale computational screening efforts. SummaryIn the field of nanoporous materials discovery, we are witnessing the emergence of big data analytics combined with traditional computational thermodynamics calculations. This review turns a critical eye on the current state of the art, with a focus on computational database generation and results from large-scale screening for gas separations. H1 Introduction.The discovery, in the late 19 th century, that zeolites could trap interesting and valuable particles in their pores opened up an entire field of research 1,2 . This seemingly simple phenomenon was an enormous boon to the oil and gas industry, seeing as how cheap, but effective porous materials could serve as a catalyst for hydrocarbon cracking. From their humble beginnings (being carved out of rock faces), zeolites, and their ability to selectively trap guests in their pores, have become integral in not only the oil and gas industry, but in detergents (as ion exchangers) and natural gas purification to name a few 1 .Zeolites have since enjoyed an almost exclusive dominance in porous materials research until the late 20 th century, when we began to observe the creation of more diverse materials in terms of chemistry, network connectivity, and physical properties.At present, there are a little over 200 known zeolite structures, which is only a small fraction of the total number of structures that have been predicted 3 . In addition, if we were also able to expand the chemical diversity of these materials beyond the conventional Si 4+ , O 2-, and Al 3+ ions found in zeolites, one could envision designing materials for virtually any gas separation application. Thus when the first articles arose in the 1990's characterising Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) [4][5][6][7][8] , and later Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) 9,10 , Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks (ZIFs) 11 , and Porous Polymer Networks (PPNs) 12 the excitement was palpable. It was recognised early-on by Yaghi, O'Keeffe, ...

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