Jenkins Group Published in Chemical Science

January 9, 2023 by Jennifer Brown

The Jenkins Lab published their research “Statistical copolymer metal organic nanotubes” in the journal Chemical Science. Graduate student Jacob Barrett co-authored the publication.

Metal–organic nanotubes (MONTs) are 1-dimensional crystalline porous materials that are formed from ligands and metals in a manner identical to more typical 3-dimensional metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). MONTs form anisotropically in one dimension making them excellent candidates for linker engineering for control of chemical composition and spacing.

A novel series of MONTs was synthesized utilizing a mixture of 1,2,4-ditriazole ligands containing both a fully protonated aryl moiety and its tetrafluorinated analog in ratios of, 0 : 1, 1 : 4, 1 : 1, 4 : 1, and 1 : 0, respectively. All MONTs were characterized by both bulk and nanoscale measurements, including SCXRD, PXRD, ssNMR and TEM, to determine the resulting co-polymer architecture (alternating, block, or statistical) and the ligand ratios in the solid materials.

All characterization methods point towards statistical copolymerization of the materials in a manner analogous to 3D MOFs, all of which notably could be achieved without destructive analytical methods.