The group of Richard Walton have this month co-authored three papers published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Communications on various aspects of porous metal-organic framework (MOF) materials.

The first, “Tuning the breathing behaviour of MIL-53 by cation mixing”, decribes a new method for modification of the properties of MOFs for adsorption applications. Warwick PhD student Matthew Breeze contributed EXAFS analysis of new mixed Fe/Cr MOFs. The work is a collaboration with four universities in France and forms part of the EU FP7 project ‘Macademia’.

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/cc/c2cc35348b

The second, “A Lithium Organic Framework with Coordinatively Unsaturated Metal Sites that Reversibly Binds Water”, reports a material that opens the potential for new ‘lightweight’ MOFs with high water stability and high gravimetric adsorption capacity towards CO₂. This work is a part of a long-standing collaboration with the Institut Lavoisier, Université de Versailles.

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/cc/c2cc35861a

The third, “Instant MOFs: Continuous Synthesis of Metal–Organic Frameworks by Rapid Solvent Mixing”, is a collaboration with Chemical Engineers at the University of Nottingham that has resulted in a new, scalebale synthesis approach to MOFs, which also allows tuning size and shape of crystals. Further collaboration with Jeremy Sloan in the Department of Physics at Warwick gave high-quality TEM images of MOF crystals.

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CC/c2cc34493a