Article abstract


Nature Materials 8, 831 - 836 (2009)
Published online: 6 September 2009 | doi:10.1038/nmat2526

Subject Categories: Polymers | Materials for energy | Porous materials

One-dimensional imidazole aggregate in aluminium porous coordination polymers with high proton conductivity

Sareeya Bureekaew1,2, Satoshi Horike1,2, Masakazu Higuchi1, Motohiro Mizuno3, Takashi Kawamura1, Daisuke Tanaka1, Nobuhiro Yanai1 & Susumu Kitagawa1,2,4


The development of anhydrous proton-conductive materials operating at temperatures above 80 °C is a challenge that needs to be met for practical applications. Herein, we propose the new idea of encapsulation of a proton-carrier molecule—imidazole in this work—in aluminium porous coordination polymers for the creation of a hybridized proton conductor under anhydrous conditions. Tuning of the host–guest interaction can generate a good proton-conducting path at temperatures above 100 °C. The dynamics of the adsorbed imidazole strongly affect the conductivity determined by 2H solid-state NMR. Isotope measurements of conductivity using imidazole-d4 showed that the proton-hopping mechanism was dominant for the conducting path. This work suggests that the combination of guest molecules and a variety of microporous frameworks would afford highly mobile proton carriers in solids and gives an idea for designing a new type of proton conductor, particularly for high-temperature and anhydrous conditions.

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  1. Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8510, Japan
  2. ERATO Kitagawa Integrated Pores Project, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Kyoto Research Park building #3, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto 600-8815, Japan
  3. Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan
  4. Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), Kyoto University, Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-850, Japan

Correspondence to: Susumu Kitagawa1,2,4 e-mail: kitagawa@sbchem.kyoto-u.ac.jp



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