Small Molecule Storage and Activation with Porous Molecules
Porous materials have played an important role in society for centuries. They have become more prevalent over the past two decades given the advent of designer materials. Novel porous solids have gained considerable recent attention for applications related to small molecules, such as storage, separation, and activation. The Bloch Group is working on developing tunable molecular adsorbents based on coordination cages for small molecule storage. We design, synthesize, and characterize novel porous coordination cages for their use as both solid and liquid adsorbents with tailorable functionalities. The materials proposed here will address long-standing shortfalls for adsorptive gas storage and significantly advance the field of network solids by serving as soluble, characterizable metal-organic framework analogs.