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Porous organic cages

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
  • Tomokazu Tozawa
  • James T. A. Jones
  • Shashikala I. Swamy
  • Shan Jiang
  • Dave J. Adams
  • Stephen Shakespeare
  • Rob Clowes
  • Darren Bradshaw
  • Tom Hasell
  • Samantha Y. Chong
  • Chiu Tang
  • Stephen Thompson
  • Julia Parker
  • Abbie Trewin
  • John Bacsa
  • Alexandra M. Z. Slawin
  • Alexander Steiner
  • Andrew I. Cooper
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>12/2009
<mark>Journal</mark>Nature Materials
Issue number12
Volume8
Number of pages6
Pages (from-to)973-978
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Porous materials are important in a wide range of applications including molecular separations and catalysis. We demonstrate that covalently bonded organic cages can assemble into crystalline microporous materials. The porosity is prefabricated and intrinsic to the molecular cage structure, as opposed to being formed by non-covalent self-assembly of non-porous sub-units. The three-dimensional connectivity between the cage windows is controlled by varying the chemical functionality such that either non-porous or permanently porous assemblies can be produced. Surface areas and gas uptakes for the latter exceed comparable molecular solids. One of the cages can be converted by recrystallization to produce either porous or non-porous polymorphs with apparent Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface areas of 550 and 23 m(2) g(-1), respectively. These results suggest design principles for responsive porous organic solids and for the modular construction of extended materials from prefabricated molecular pores.