New generation of NMR console for high level experiments on porous solids

Equipment, AAP 2017

Team: Institut Lavoisier Versailles

Project leader: Charlotte Martineau-Corcos

Abstract:

The permanent porosity in the structure of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) confers them a variety of unique and original properties that bulk solids may not have, hence there is a great enthusiasm to explore applications in the fields of gas storage, capture, and separation, proton conductivity, biomedicine, catalysis, sensing, etc. Having access to a local characterization tool such as solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) spectroscopy has proven essential to get a much deeper understanding of the structure, local order and dynamics of these materials. If some of these studies employed highly sophisticated techniques, the more standard NMR spectrometer we have at ILV allowed us to successfully address great challenges, in particular the structure determination of a large number of MOFs by coupling the SSNMR data with diffraction and DFT calculations (i), with an originality on fluorinated MOFs (ii), and a better understanding of MOF formation (iii). However, we are now facing the growing complexity of the materials, which we can no longer efficiently tackle by our current NMR apparatus. This includes: a) paramagnetic MOFs, notably Fe­based MOFs which are of great interest as they are cheap, non­toxic and can be used in electro/photocatalysis, in biomedicine as nanovector; b) understanding of the nucleation/growth processes in MOF nanoparticles, key for further use of the NP in membranes or in bio-applications; c) the localization of guest species  and their interactions with the host frameworks, key to understand transport/separation phenomena in MOFs.

The aim to acquire this new equipment is therefore to maintain our leadership in structure determination and to investigate the fundamental issues in MOF chemistry listed above. Achieving these goals relies on the unique and original combination of complementary expertise in NMR, diffraction and synthesis of new functional MOFs, MOF nanoparticles present in this consortium.

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