Crystal Growth of Nanoporous Materials

我们提出了最基本的、雄心勃勃的、协调一致的、多学科的调查，以了解晶体生长和合理设计开放框架、纳米多孔材料的尝试。我们相信，这项研究的发现将标志着我们对晶体生长的理解以及我们利用我们的理解来生产具有独特性能和应用的新材料的能力方面的重大飞跃。人们对多孔材料的合成进行了广泛的研究。然而，这种合成工作的大部分主要是为了(I)发现新的结构，(Ii)修改或改进现有材料，或(Iii)工艺开发，以使这种材料能够成功地大规模生产。到目前为止，在合成和结晶机制方面的努力已经产生了许多积极的结果，但也有许多未回答的问题，例如：(I)成核的详细机制，(Ii)生长物种的同一性和(Iii)纳米晶体的生长是通过添加还是聚集发生的。这项研究涉及将一套强大的补充技术应用于研究开放框架材料的晶体生长，包括：原子力显微镜、高分辨率透射和扫描电子显微镜、增强数据处理的原位核磁共振、X射线衍射和质谱学。更好地了解合成过程可能会产生重要的经济效益，例如，更好的过程控制，提高试剂使用效率，改善重复性，以及为特定应用修改或定制产品的能力。也许最重要的是能够确定成功的合成路线，以获得迄今未知的结构和组合物，这些结构和组合物已被理论预测具有有益的特征。这种向初步理解的新水平迈进的一步，将为化学、物理(有序阵列)和生物材料的创新应用开辟道路。

We propose the most fundamental, ambitious and concerted, multi-disciplinary investigation into the understanding of crystal growth and rational design of open framework, nano-porous materials yet attempted. We believe the findings from this study will mark a major leap forward into our understanding of crystal growth and our ability to exploit our understanding to produce new materials with unique properties and applications. Extensive studies on the synthesis of porous materials have been carried out. However, the majority of this synthetic work has been aimed primarily at either (i) the discovery of new structures, (ii) modification or improvement of existing materials or (iii) process development to enable such materials to be produced successfully on a large scale. The effort so far on synthesis and crystallisation mechanism has yielded many positive results but also many unanswered questions, for example: (i) the detailed mechanism of nucleation (ii) the identity of growth species and (iii) whether nanocrystal growth occurs by addition or aggregation. This research involves the application of a powerful set of complementary techniques to the study of crystal growth of open-framework materials comprising: atomic force microscopy, high resolution transmission and scanning electron microscopies, in-situ NMR with enhanced data processing, X-ray diffraction and mass spectrometry. A substantially better understanding of the synthesis process is likely to yield important economic benefits, for example, better process control, increased efficiency in reagent usage, improved reproducibility and the capacity to modify or tailor products for specific applications. Perhaps most important of all would be the ability to identify successful synthetic routes to as-yet unknown structures and compositions which have been predicted on theoretical grounds to have beneficial characteristics. Such a step forward to a new level of primary understanding would open the way to innovative applications in chemistry, physics (ordered arrays) and biomaterials.