Effect of Crystallite Size on the Flexibility and Negative Compressibility of Hydrophobic Metal-Organic Frameworks.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38033298.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02431 and PMC identifier 10722533.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Flexible nanoporous materials are of great interest for applications in many fields such as sensors, catalysis, material separation, and energy storage. Of these, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are the most explored thus far. However, tuning their flexibility for a particular application remains challenging. In this work, we explore the effect of the <i>exogenous</i> property of crystallite size on the flexibility of the ZIF-8 MOF. By subjecting hydrophobic ZIF-8 to hydrostatic compression with water, the flexibility of its empty framework and the giant negative compressibility it experiences during water intrusion were recorded <i>via in operando</i> synchrotron irradiation. It was observed that as the crystallite size is reduced to the nanoscale, both flexibility and the negative compressibility of the framework are reduced by ∼25% and ∼15%, respectively. These results pave the way for <i>exogenous</i> tuning of flexibility in MOFs without altering their chemistries.