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Exceptional ammonia uptake by a covalent organic framework

Nature Chemistry volume 2, pages 235–238 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are porous crystalline materials composed of light elements linked by strong covalent bonds. A number of these materials contain a high density of Lewis acid boron sites that can strongly interact with Lewis basic guests, which makes them ideal for the storage of corrosive chemicals such as ammonia. We found that a member of the covalent organic framework family, COF-10, shows the highest uptake capacity (15 mol kg−1, 298 K, 1 bar) of any porous material, including microporous 13X zeolite (9 mol kg−1), Amberlyst 15 (11 mol kg−1) and mesoporous silica, MCM-41 (7.9 mol kg−1). Notably, ammonia can be removed from the pores of COF-10 by heating samples at 200 °C under vacuum. In addition, repeated adsorption of ammonia into COF-10 causes a shift in the interlayer packing, which reduces its apparent surface area to nitrogen. However, owing to the strong Lewis acid–base interactions, the total uptake capacity of ammonia and the structural integrity of the COF are maintained after several cycles of adsorption/desorption.

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Figure 1: Construction of COF-10 for ammonia storage.
Figure 2: Ammonia uptake in state-of-the-art materials and COF-10.
Figure 3: Ammonia uptake and release in COF-10.
Figure 4: Preservation of COF-10 structure during uptake and release cycles of ammonia.
Figure 5: COF-10 as a solid adsorbent for ammonia.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the Department of Energy (DOE) (DEFG0208ER15935) for adsorption studies and Department of Defense (DOD) (W911NF-06-1-0405) for adsorption equipment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Center for Reticular Chemistry at the California NanoSystems Institute, University of California-Los Angeles, 607 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Christian J. Doonan, David J. Tranchemontagne, T. Grant Glover, Joseph R. Hunt & Omar M. Yaghi

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  1. Christian J. Doonan
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  2. David J. Tranchemontagne
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  3. T. Grant Glover
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  4. Joseph R. Hunt
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Contributions

C.J.D and O.M.Y conceived and designed the experiments. All authors contributed significantly and collaboratively to performing the experiments, analysing the data and writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Omar M. Yaghi.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Doonan, C., Tranchemontagne, D., Glover, T. et al. Exceptional ammonia uptake by a covalent organic framework. Nature Chem 2, 235–238 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.548

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