No Arabic abstract
Diamine-appended metal{organic frameworks (MOFs) of the form Mg2(dobpdc)(diamine)2 adsorb CO2 in a cooperative fashion, exhibiting an abrupt change in CO2 occupancy with pressure or temperature. This change is accompanied by hysteresis. While hysteresis is suggestive of a firstorder phase transition, we show that hysteretic temperature-occupancy curves associated with this material are qualitatively unlike the curves seen in the presence of a phase transition; they are instead consistent with CO2 chain polymerization, within one-dimensional channels in the MOF, in the absence of a phase transition. Our simulations of a microscopic model reproduce this dynamics, and point the way toward rational control, in and out of equilibrium, of cooperative adsorption in this industrially important class of materials.
Cooperative adsorption of gases by porous frameworks permits more efficient uptake and removal than does the more usual non-cooperative (Langmuir-type) adsorption. Cooperativity, signaled by a step-like isotherm, is usually attributed to a phase transition of the framework. However, the class of metal-organic frameworks mmen-M$_2$(dobpdc) exhibit cooperative adsorption of CO2 but show no evidence of a phase transition. Here we show how cooperativity emerges in these frameworks in the absence of a phase transition. We use a combination of quantum and statistical mechanics to show that cooperativity results from a sharp but finite increase, with pressure, of the mean length of chains of CO2 molecules that polymerize within the framework. Our study provides microscopic understanding of the emergent features of cooperative binding, including the position, slope and height of the isotherm step, and indicates how to optimize gas storage and separation in these materials.
It is textbookly regarded that phonons, i.e., an energy quantum of propagating lattice waves, are the main heat carriers in perfect crystals. As a result, in many crystals, e.g., bulk silicon, the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity shows the classical 1/T relationship because of the dominant Umklapp phonon-phonon scattering in the systems. However, the thermal conductivity of many crystalline metal-organic frameworks is very low and shows no, a weakly negative and even a weakly positive temperature dependence (glass-like thermal conductivity). It has been in debate whether the thermal transport can be still described by phonons in metal-organic frameworks. Here, by studying two typical systems, i.e., crystal zeolitic imidazolate framework-4 (cZIF-4) and crystal zeolitic imidazolate framework-62 (c-ZIF62), we prove that the ultralow thermal conductivity in metal-organic frameworks is resulting from the strong phonon intrinsic structure scattering due to the large mass difference and the large cavity between Zn and N atoms. Our mean free path spectrum analysis shows that both propagating and non-propagating anharmonic vibrational modes exist in the systems, and contribute largely to the thermal conductivity. The corresponding weakly negative or positive temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity is stemming from the competition between the propagating and non-propagating anharmonic vibrational modes. Our study here provides a fundamental understanding of thermal transport in metal-organic frameworks and will guide the design of the thermal-related applications using metal-organic frameworks, e.g., inflammable gas storage, chemical catalysis, solar thermal conversion and so on.
Very recently, it has been shown that vanadium dichalcogenides (VX$_2$, X=S, Se and Te) monolayers show intrinsic ferromagnetism, and their critical temperatures are nearly to or beyond room temperature. Hence, they would have wide potential applications in next-generation nanoelectronic and spintronic devices. In this work, being inspired by a recent study we systematically perform Monte Carlo simulations based on single-site update Metropolis algorithm to investigate the hysteresis features of VX$_2$ monolayers for a wide range of temperatures up to 600 K. Our simulation results indicate that, both remanence and coercivity values tend to decrease with increasing temperature. Furthermore, it is found that hysteresis curves start to evolve from rectangular at the lower temperature regions to nearly S-shaped with increasing temperature.
Metal-organic framework (MOF) UiO-66 nanocrystals were previously believed to be piezo/ferro-electrically inactive because of their centrosymmetric lattice symmetries (Fm-3m (225)) revealed by Powder X-ray diffraction. However, via delicate dual AC resonance tracking piezoresponse force microscopy and piezoresponse force spectroscopy characterizations, our nanoscale probing for the first time demonstrate that UiO-66 nanocrystals show piezo/ferro-electric response. Our compelling experimental and theoretically analyses disclose that the structure of UiO-66 should not be the highly centrosymmetric Fm-3m (225) but a reduced symmetry form instead. UiO-66(Hf)-type MOFs possess stronger piezoresponse and better ferroelectric switching behaviours than their counterparts UiO-66 (Zr)-type MOFs. Our study not only enriches the structural understanding of UiO-66 MOF, but also suggests possible modification of electronic property of the MOFs by judicious selection of metal ions and functional ligands.
We present a three-dimensional Ising model where lines of equal spins are frozen in such that they form an ordered framework structure. The frame spins impose an external field on the rest of the spins (active spins). We demonstrate that this porous Ising model can be seen as a minimal model for condensation transitions of gas molecules in metal-organic frameworks. Using Monte Carlo simulation techniques, we compare the phase behavior of a porous Ising model with that of a particle-based model for the condensation of methane (CH$_4$) in the isoreticular metal-organic framework IRMOF-16. For both models, we find a line of first-order phase transitions that end in a critical point. We show that the critical behavior in both cases belongs to the 3D Ising universality class, in contrast to other phase transitions in confinement such as capillary condensation.