Designing New Phases of Molecular Porous Organic Materials: Liquids, Liquid Crystals, and Glasses

多孔材料在各种应用中非常重要，例如温室气体的捕获和占世界能源消耗很大比例的化学混合物的分离。这些材料通常是结晶有序固体并具有延伸的骨架结构，但这不是在这些应用中使用的先决条件。例如，分子多孔有机材料如多孔有机笼的使用，以及最近实现的新种类和相如多孔液体和熔融淬火多孔玻璃，提供了结晶有序固体不可能的替代方法和潜在的独特应用。多孔有机笼是以模块化方式从至少两个构建块组装的离散分子物质，并且它们包含一个永久的空腔，气体可以通过窗口进入-这使得它们是溶液可加工的，不像多孔固体具有扩展的框架结构。这些笼是非常通用的，可以直接在固态下包装在一起，有点像乐高积木，形成具有互连孔网络的结晶固体，或者它们可以被修改以访问不同的类别和相，包括多孔液体和无序玻璃。多孔液体或具有孔的液体是最近报道的一类新的多孔材料，其将液体的流动性与多孔固体的性质相结合，并且因此具有在连续系统周围泵送的能力，从而促进客人装载和卸载步骤。还可以熔融骤冷液体有机笼以形成多孔玻璃，提供用于直接浇铸用于分子分离的膜的替代方法，所述分子分离通常需要使用溶剂或另外的聚合物添加剂。该项目的愿景是探索和开发分子多孔有机材料的新阶段和类别，大大扩展可用的范围。具体而言，其目的是解锁新型多孔液体和玻璃，并设计功能，以获得新的相和多孔材料类别，如多孔液晶-一种存在于有序多孔固体和无序多孔液体之间的相。这将使我们获得基本的知识和了解每一种类型，从而使我们能够开始发展的结构性质的关系的理解。最终，实现新的阶段和类别的多孔材料有可能在多孔材料领域提供更有选择性的气体捕获和节能分离的重大进展。

Porous materials are important in a wide variety of applications, such as the capture of greenhouse gases and the separation of chemical mixtures that account for a large percentage of the world's energy consumption. These materials are normally crystalline ordered solids and have an extended framework structure, but this is not a pre-requisite for utility in these applications. For example, the use of molecular porous organic materials such as porous organic cages, and the recent realisation of new classes and phases such as porous liquids and melt-quenched porous glasses, offer alternative approaches and potentially unique applications which are not possible for crystalline ordered solids.Porous organic cages are discrete molecular species assembled in a modular fashion from at least two building blocks, and they contain a permanent cavity that is accessible to gases through windows - this makes them solution processable, unlike porous solids with an extended framework structure. These cages are extremely versatile and can be directed to pack together in the solid state, a bit like Lego building blocks, to form crystalline solids with interconnected pore networks, or they can be modified to access different classes and phases including porous liquids and unordered glasses. Porous liquids, or liquids with holes, are a recently reported new class of porous material which combines the mobility of a liquid with the properties of a porous solid, and as such have the ability to be pumped around a continuous system, facilitating guest loading and unloading steps. It is also possible to melt-quench liquid organic cages to form porous glasses, offering an alternative method for directly casting membranes for molecular separations which typically require the use of solvent or an additional polymeric additive. The vision of this project is to explore and develop novel phases and classes of molecular porous organic materials, substantially extending the range of those available. Specifically, the aim is to unlock new types of porous liquids and glasses, and to design in functionality that gives access to new phases and classes of porous materials such as porous liquid crystals - a phase that exists between an ordered porous solid and a disordered porous liquid. This will allow us to gain a fundamental knowledge and understanding of each type, thus enabling us to begin to develop an understanding of the structure-property relationships. Ultimately, the realisation of new phases and classes of porous materials has the potential to offer major advances in the area of porous materials for more selective gas capture and energy efficient separations.