Inorganic Seminar
"Design and Synthesis of Porous Salts"
Abstract: Relatively recently, porous molecular adsorbents, including porous organic cages and porous coordination cages, have garnered considerable attention as a new class of materials with potential applications in small molecule storage, separation, or activation. The molecular nature of these materials gives them a number of advantages as compared to network solids as their solution processability can be leveraged for targeted synthesis, modification, and utilization strategies. This talk will focus on the design, synthesis, and characterization of new classes of highly porous coordination cages for small molecule storage and activation. Further, it will detail the intriguing interplay between surface area and solubility in a class of paddlewheel-based cages. We have recently shown that these materials, which conceptually serve as soluble metal-organic framework analogs, display impressive porosity under specific synthesis and activation conditions. Although these cages are typically amorphous upon activation, a strategy in which pillaring ligands are utilized endow the materials with high crystallinity and thus compatibility with diffraction methods for the identification and optimization of gas binding sites. Finally, porous salts, a new class of porous solids based on charged coordination cages, will be discussed in the context of applications related to small molecule activation.