Porous organic cages.
Porous materials are important in a wide range of applications including molecular separations and catalysis. We demonstrate that covalently bonded organic cages can assemble into crystalline microporous materials. The porosity is prefabricated and intrinsic to the molecular cage structure, as opposed to being formed by non-covalent self-assembly of non-porous sub-units. The three-dimensional connectivity between the cage windows is controlled by varying the chemical functionality such that either non-porous or permanently porous assemblies can be produced. Surface areas and gas uptakes for the latter exceed comparable molecular solids. One of the cages can be converted by recrystallization to produce either porous or non-porous polymorphs with apparent Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface areas of 550 and 23 m2 g(-1), respectively. These results suggest design principles for responsive porous organic solids and for the modular construction of extended materials from prefabricated molecular pores.
Department of Chemistry and Centre for Materials Discovery, University of Liverpool, Crown Street, Liverpool L69 7ZD, UK.
Tomokazu
T
Tozawa
James T A
JT
Jones
Shashikala I
SI
Swamy
Shan
S
Jiang
Dave J
DJ
Adams
Stephen
S
Shakespeare
Rob
R
Clowes
Darren
D
Bradshaw
Tom
T
Hasell
Samantha Y
SY
Chong
Chiu
C
Tang
Stephen
S
Thompson
Julia
J
Parker
Abbie
A
Trewin
John
J
Bacsa
Alexandra M Z
AM
Slawin
Alexander
A
Steiner
Andrew I
AI
Cooper