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Professor David Jenkins

Jenkins Publication Investigates Metal-Organic Nanotube Interactions

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Professor David Jenkins

Chemistry professor David Jenkins along with his graduate student Jacob Barrett and postdoc Phattananawee Nalaoh recently published an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). The article, entitled “Intertube Interactions in Multivariant Metal-Organic Nanotubes” highlights Jenkins’s exploration of the fundamental understanding of metal-organic nanotubes (MONTs). MONTs are a relatively new 1D subclass of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

In 2025, the Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to three researchers working on MOFs.  MOFs are materials composed of metal ions linked together by organic molecules. The manipulation of these linkages can create materials for a variety of applications, including gas storage, chemical separations, and catalysis.

“The easiest way to think about a metal organic framework is to think about a cube that is infinite in all directions,” said Jenkins.  “Each vertex of the cube, each point, is a metal containing piece, and each edge on the cube is an organic group that connects the vertices. On the inside is a hole, which makes it porous, but these pores are on the nanometer scale.”

MONTs, the subject of Jenkins’s research, are a subclass on MOFs. However, instead of a cube, MONTs are tube-shaped structures, similar to straws. MONTs come together in small bundles, and the interactions between individual MONTs in those bundles have a greater impact on the MONTs’ properties.

“If you imagine a group of straws, they’re typically held together by the box or container they’re in. MONTs have very, very weak chemical interactions holding them together between the straws because there is no box on the outside. These are weaker forces than a classic chemical bond,” said Jenkins.  “In this paper, we looked at how different types of forces could be applied with different organic linkers on the tube, and how that would change the shape and interaction between them.”

PhD student Jacob Barrett is a member of the Jenkins research group.

Though MONTs are a fairly new material in comparison to MOFs, the Jenkins group has been investigating MONTs for over a decade. He and his team published one of the earliest large-scale papers on the synthesis of MONTs in 2014. Since then, they have continued developing the foundational knowledge necessary to discover potential future applications of MONTs. Their recent paper, co-authored by PhD student Jacob Barrett, provides another layer of understanding to that foundation.

“The small spaces in between matter a lot more for MONTs than they do for MOFs,” said Barrett.  “Understanding the interactions between MONTs is critical to understanding both how they will behave as a bulk material, and how we can tune their size and shape to achieve specific outcomes.”

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The full article can be read on the ACS Publications website.

Sheng Dai Among World’s Most Highly Cited Researchers for 10 Years

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Sheng Dai, professor of chemistry, is one of six faculty members from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to be named to Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list for 2025, an honor bestowed on only one in 1,000 of the world’s scientists and social scientists. The designation recognizes researchers whose publications are among the top 1% by citations in their respective fields over the past decade.

“Being named among the world’s most highly cited researchers is a powerful testament to the global impact of our faculty and students’ work,” said Deb Crawford, UT’s vice chancellor for research, innovation, and economic development. “We are incredibly proud of these scholars, whose research continues to shape their disciplines and strengthen UT’s reputation as a leader in research that impacts the world.”

Dai, who holds a joint faculty appointment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named to the Highly Cited Researchers list for the 10th time. His work focuses on developing advanced materials for energy-related applications, particularly in areas like ionic liquids and molten salts, advanced separation processes, high-entropy materials, electrochemical processes and sustainable carbon transformations.

Dai is currently studying ionic liquids and porous materials to learn how they can be used for separating different substances, storing energy and speeding up chemical reactions. He is also developing ways to turn plant-based carbon into graphite, which can be used for storing energy.

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Xue Group Publishes in Nature Communications

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The Xue Research Group has published their recent work in the journal Nature Communications. The Xue Group is helmed by Professor Ziling (Ben) Xue, whose work includes materials chemistry and the study of magnetism.

Xue’s paper, “Haldane topological spin-1 chains in a planar metal-organic framework” describes his group’s work exploring the magnetic properties of NiBO. NiBO was previously reported as part of a family of two-dimensional metal coordination polymers, also known as MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) but the possible topological magnetic properties of the material had not been investigated.

Xue’s team used a variety of techniques to examine the material, including variable-temperature powder neutron diffraction, inelastic neutron scattering, and Monte Carlo simulations of the spin-1 chains found in NiBO. They began testing not knowing what NiBO would reveal but the results of their work showed the material fell into a particular category of magnetic materials known as Haldane topological solids.

Haldane topological materials possess a specific magnetic characteristic that makes them potentially useful in spintronics (or spin electronics) and quantum computing. Xue’s findings could be relevant to the development of next-generation storage materials and the future of medical detectors.

Xue’s team included recent PhD graduate Pagnareach Tin and current PhD student Michael Jenkins, whose work he described as critical to the success of the project. The team also collaborated with Jie Xing and Rongyin Jin at the University of South Carolina, Nils Caci and Stefan Wessel at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, J. Krzystek at National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and Zheng Gai, Cheng Li, Luke Daemen, and Yongqiang Cheng at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Read the full article here.

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Jenkins Lab Published in Angewandte Chemie

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The Jenkins Lab published their research “Giving Gold Wings: Ultrabright and Fragmentation Free Mass Spectrometry Reporters for Barcoding, Bioconjugation Monitoring, and Data Storage” in the international journal Angewandte Chemie. Graduate students Isabel Jensen and Gurkiran Kaur were co-authors on the piece. 

The widespread application of laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) highlights the need for a bright and multiplexable labeling platform. While ligand-capped Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) have emerged as a promising LDI-MS contrast agent, the predominant thiol ligands suffer from low ion yields and extensive fragmentation.

In this work, they developed a N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligand platform that enhances AuNP LDI-MS performance. NHC scaffolds are tuned to generate barcoded AuNPs which, when benchmarked against thiol-AuNPs, are bright mass tags and form unfragmented ions in high yield. To illustrate the transformative potential of NHC ligands, the mass tags were employed in three orthogonal applications: monitoring a bioconjugation reaction, performing multiplexed imaging, and storing and reading encoded information.

These results demonstrate that NHC-nanoparticle systems are an ideal platform for LDI-MS and greatly broaden the scope of nanoparticle contrast agents.

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Jenkins Group Published in Chemical Science

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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.