Temperature-regulated guest admission and release in microporous materials

Gang (Kevin) Li, Jin Shang, Qinfen Gu, Rohan V. Awati, Nathan Jensen, Andrew Grant, Xueying Zhang, David S. Sholl, Jefferson Z. Liu, Paul A. Webley and Eric F. May ()
Additional contact information
Gang (Kevin) Li: Centre for Energy, School of Mechanical & Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia
Jin Shang: Joint Laboratory for Energy and Environmental Catalysis, School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong
Qinfen Gu: Australian Synchrotron
Rohan V. Awati: School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Nathan Jensen: Centre for Energy, School of Mechanical & Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia
Andrew Grant: Centre for Energy, School of Mechanical & Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia
Xueying Zhang: The University of Melbourne
David S. Sholl: School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Jefferson Z. Liu: Monash University
Paul A. Webley: The University of Melbourne
Eric F. May: Centre for Energy, School of Mechanical & Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract While it has long been known that some highly adsorbing microporous materials suddenly become inaccessible to guest molecules below certain temperatures, previous attempts to explain this phenomenon have failed. Here we show that this anomalous sorption behaviour is a temperature-regulated guest admission process, where the pore-keeping group’s thermal fluctuations are influenced by interactions with guest molecules. A physical model is presented to explain the atomic-level chemistry and structure of these thermally regulated micropores, which is crucial to systematic engineering of new functional materials such as tunable molecular sieves, gated membranes and controlled-release nanocontainers. The model was validated experimentally with H2, N2, Ar and CH4 on three classes of microporous materials: trapdoor zeolites, supramolecular host calixarenes and metal-organic frameworks. We demonstrate how temperature can be exploited to achieve appreciable hydrogen and methane storage in such materials without sustained pressure. These findings also open new avenues for gas sensing and isotope separation.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15777 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms15777

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15777

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().