Jenkins Publication Investigates Metal-Organic Nanotube Interactions
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.”
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.