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In situ visualization of loading-dependent water effects in a stable metal–organic framework

Nature Chemistry volume 12, pages 186–192 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Competitive water adsorption can have a significant impact on metal–organic framework performance properties, ranging from occupying active sites in catalytic reactions to co-adsorbing at the most favourable adsorption sites in gas separation and storage applications. In this study, we investigate, for a metal–organic framework that is stable after moisture exposure, what are the reversible, loading-dependent structural changes that occur during water adsorption. Herein, a combination of in situ synchrotron powder and single-crystal diffraction, infrared spectroscopy and molecular modelling analysis was used to understand the important role of loading-dependent water effects in a water stable metal–organic framework. Through this analysis, insights into changes in crystallographic lattice parameters, water siting information and water-induced defect structure as a response to water loading were obtained. This work shows that, even in stable metal–organic frameworks that maintain their porosity and crystallinity after moisture exposure, important molecular-level structural changes can still occur during water adsorption due to guest–host interactions such as water-induced bond rearrangements.

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Fig. 1: In situ synchrotron powder diffraction experiments.
Fig. 2: Water-induced structural changes.
Fig. 3: Defect structures.
Fig. 4: Water siting, microstrain and Young’s modulus analysis.

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Data availability

Data supporting the claims and findings of this paper are available within the Supplementary Information or are available upon request from the corresponding author. Crystallographic data for all structures reported in this paper have been deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), CCDC numbers 1864840 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_01), 1864836 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_02), 1864833 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_03), 1864842 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_04), 1864834 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_05), 1864835 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_06), 1864838 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_07), 1864837 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09_Flow_08), 1864839 (DMOF-TM_crystal 09, static) and 1864841 (DMOF-1, crystal 15, static; where crystal 09 and crystal 15 were both selected from the same batch). Copies of the crystallographic data can be obtained at https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/structures/ free of charge. A SCXRD structure of the ‘activated’ DMOF-TM structure could not be obtained; unit cell parameters and atomic positions were obtained by Rietveld refinement, refined to the SCXRD data from this study (P4/nbm) and also to the structure previously reported for this material (P4/mmm).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported as a part of the Center for Understanding and Control of Acid Gas-Induced Evolution of Materials for Energy, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0012577. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. N.C.B. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) award under grant no. DGE-1148903. D.D. acknowledges support from the Netherlands Research Council for Chemical Sciences through a VIDI grant and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Exacte Wetenschappen (Physical Sciences) for the use of supercomputer facilities with financial support from the NWO. NSF’s ChemMatCARS Sector 15 is supported by the Divisions of Chemistry (CHE) and Materials Research (DMR), National Science Foundation, under grant no. NSF/CHE- 1834750. Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Nicholas C. Burtch, Ian M. Walton.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Nicholas C. Burtch, Ian M. Walton, Julian T. Hungerford, Cody R. Morelock, Yang Jiao & Krista S. Walton

  2. Van’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jurn Heinen & David Dubbeldam

  3. ChemMatCARS, University of Chicago, Argonne, IL, USA

    Yu-Sheng Chen

  4. X-ray Science Division, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Andrey A. Yakovenko & Wenqian Xu

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  1. Nicholas C. Burtch
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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. N.C.B., C.R.M., Y.J. and J.T.H. performed the powder synthesis and adsorption characterization work, and C.R.M. led the synchrotron diffraction analysis with help from N.C.B., A.A.Y. and W.X. The computational studies were performed by N.C.B., J.H. and D.D. SCXRD experiments and analysis were led by I.M.W. with assistance from Y.-S.C. and J.T.H. IR spectroscopy experiments and analysis were performed by J.T.H. and I.M.W. The manuscript was written by N.C.B., I.M.W and K.S.W. with input from the other authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Krista S. Walton.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Sample synthesis and preparation; characterization; molecular dynamics simulations; theoretical defects calculations; Supplementary Figures 1–46; references 1–33.

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 1; CCDC reference 1864840

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 1; CCDC reference 1864840

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 2; CCDC reference 1864836

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 2; CCDC reference 1864836

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 3; CCDC reference 1864833

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 3; CCDC reference 1864833

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 4; CCDC reference 1864842

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 4; CCDC reference 1864842

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 5; CCDC reference 1864834

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 5; CCDC reference 1864834

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 6; CCDC reference 1864835

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 6; CCDC reference 1864835

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 7; CCDC reference 1864838

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 7; CCDC reference 1864838

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 8; CCDC reference 1864837

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Flow 8; CCDC reference 1864837

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Static; CCDC reference 1864839

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 09, Static; CCDC reference 1864839

Crystallographic data

CIF for DMOF-TM, crystal 15, Static; CCDC reference 1864841

Crystallographic data

Structure factors for DMOF-TM, crystal 15, Static; CCDC reference 1864841

Crystallographic data

CIF for the activated DMOF-TM, refined to P4/nbm

Crystallographic data

CIF for the activated DMOF-TM, refined to P4/mmm

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Burtch, N.C., Walton, I.M., Hungerford, J.T. et al. In situ visualization of loading-dependent water effects in a stable metal–organic framework. Nat. Chem. 12, 186–192 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0374-y

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