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Modular and predictable assembly of porous organic molecular crystals

Nature volume 474, pages 367–371 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Nanoporous molecular frameworks1,2,3,4,5,6,7 are important in applications such as separation, storage and catalysis. Empirical rules exist for their assembly but it is still challenging to place and segregate functionality in three-dimensional porous solids in a predictable way. Indeed, recent studies of mixed crystalline frameworks suggest a preference for the statistical distribution of functionalities throughout the pores7 rather than, for example, the functional group localization found in the reactive sites of enzymes8. This is a potential limitation for ‘one-pot’ chemical syntheses of porous frameworks from simple starting materials. An alternative strategy is to prepare porous solids from synthetically preorganized molecular pores9,10,11,12,13,14,15. In principle, functional organic pore modules could be covalently prefabricated and then assembled to produce materials with specific properties. However, this vision of mix-and-match assembly is far from being realized, not least because of the challenge in reliably predicting three-dimensional structures for molecular crystals, which lack the strong directional bonding found in networks. Here we show that highly porous crystalline solids can be produced by mixing different organic cage modules that self-assemble by means of chiral recognition. The structures of the resulting materials can be predicted computationally16,17, allowing in silico materials design strategies18. The constituent pore modules are synthesized in high yields on gram scales in a one-step reaction. Assembly of the porous co-crystals is as simple as combining the modules in solution and removing the solvent. In some cases, the chiral recognition between modules can be exploited to produce porous organic nanoparticles. We show that the method is valid for four different cage modules and can in principle be generalized in a computationally predictable manner based on a lock-and-key assembly between modules.

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Figure 1: Modular assembly of porous organic cages.
Figure 2: Window-to-window assembly results in porosity.
Figure 3: Three-dimensional cage assembly can be predicted computationally.
Figure 4: Module assembly in solution can be used to produce porous nanoparticles.

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Acknowledgements

We thank EPSRC (EP/H000925/1) and the Dutch Polymer Institute for funding. The UK national high-performance computing service HECToR was used for this work through the HPC Materials Chemistry Consortium (EPSRC grant EP/F067496. A.I.C. and G.M.D. are Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award holder and A.T. and G.M.D. are Royal Society University Research Fellows.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Centre for Materials Discovery, University of Liverpool, Crown Street, Liverpool L69 7ZD, UK

    James T. A. Jones, Tom Hasell, Xiaofeng Wu, John Bacsa, Kim E. Jelfs, Marc Schmidtmann, Samantha Y. Chong, Dave J. Adams, Abbie Trewin, Alexander Steiner & Andrew I. Cooper

  2. Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0AJ, UK

    Florian Schiffman, Furio Cora & Ben Slater

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK

    Graeme M. Day

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Contributions

J.T.A.J. prepared cage modules and co-crystals thereof, contributed to powder X-ray diffraction analysis, carried out high-throughput co-crystallization screening experiments and generally coordinated the experimental work; T.H. prepared cage modules and co-crystals and the nanocrystals of (3-S, 3-R), and carried out microscopy; J.T.A.J. and T.H. did the gas sorption analysis; X.W. synthesized module 5; D.J.A. contributed to the cage synthesis; J.B., M.S., S.Y.C. and A.S. performed the crystallography; K.E.J., A.T., F.C. and B.S. performed molecular and periodic simulations, in particular the DFT studies; G.M.D. led the crystal structure prediction; and A.I.C. designed the project and wrote the paper with contributions from all co-authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew I. Cooper.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Text, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figures 1-26 with legends and additional references. (PDF 5033 kb)

Supplementary Movie 1

The movie shows the effect of mixing a solution of cage 3-R with an equivalent solution of cage 3-S - see ‘Figure 27’ legend in Supplementary Information file. (MOV 2730 kb)

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Jones, J., Hasell, T., Wu, X. et al. Modular and predictable assembly of porous organic molecular crystals. Nature 474, 367–371 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10125

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