Chemistry of porous coordination polymers*
Tapas Kumar Maji1 and Susumu Kitagawa2
1Chemistry and Physics of Materials Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur, Bangalore, 560 064, India; 2Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Katsura campus, Kyoto, 615-8510, Japan
Abstract: Remarkable advances in the recent development of porous compounds based upon coordination polymers have paved the way toward functional chemistry having potential applications such as gas storage, separation, and catalysis. From the synthetic point of view, the advantage is a designable framework, which can readily be constructed from building blocks, the so-called bottom-up assembly. Compared with conventional porous materials such as zeolites and activated carbons, porous inorganic-organic hybrid frameworks have higher potential for adsorption of small molecules because of their designability with respect to the coordination geometry around the central metal ion as well as size and probable multifunctionality of bridging organic ligands. Although rigidity and robustness of porous framework with different degree of adsorption are the most studied properties of metal-organic coordination frameworks, there are few studies on dynamic porous frameworks, which could open up a new dimension in materials chemistry.
Keywords: coordination polymers; porous networks; rigid frameworks; flexible frameworks; gas adsorption.
*Paper based on a presentation at the 9th Eurasia Conference on Chemical Sciences, 9-13 September 2006, Antalya, Turkey. Other presentations are published in this issue, pp. 2101-2177.