Structures Designed with Reticular Chemistry Store Voluminous Amounts of Gases

A press release from UCLA outlines how chemists at UCLA have designed and developed a class of materials for the storage of very large quantities of gases which could be used in alternative energy technologies.

The research, to be published on April 13 in the journal Science, demonstrates how the design principles of reticular chemistry have been used to create three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks, which are entirely constructed from strong covalent bonds and have high thermal stability, high surface areas and extremely low densities.

Led by Omar Yaghi, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, the team has developed reticular chemistry, which describes a new class of materials in which components can be changed nearly at will. Reticular chemistry is the chemistry of linking molecular building blocks by strong bonds into predetermined structures. The principles of reticular chemistry and the ability to construct chemical structures from these molecular building blocks has led to the creation of new classes of materials of exceptional variety.

The covalent organic frameworks, or COFs (pronounced "coffs"), one of these new classes of materials, are the first crystalline porous organic networks. The image shows the crystal structure of COF-108, which is synthesized from light elements (H,B,C,O) and is the lowest-density crystal ever produced (0.17 g/cm3).

Yaghi and his colleagues believe that because of their functional flexibility and their extremely light weight and high porosity, COFs are uniquely suited to store hydrogen for use as a fuel, to use methane as an alternative fuel, and to capture and store carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks before it reaches the atmosphere.