Gas separation heats up
A temperature-responsive porous compound that can selectively separate molecules has been reported by Japanese scientists. Susumu Kitagawa, at Japan Science and Technology Agency, Kyoto, and colleagues made a new porous coordination polymer with pores that only open up and adsorb guest molecules at high temperature. This increased adsorption at increased temperatures is opposite to the adsorption behaviours of other porous compounds, says Kitagawa.
The polymer can selectively adsorb oxygen over argon, an industrially useful behaviour. It is usually difficult to separate these gases using conventional adsorbents because the gas molecules have similar sizes, shapes and physicochemical properties. Kitagawa believes this work could open up a new field of external-stimuli-responsive porous solids for recognising and separating target molecules.
Original publication: Ryotaro Matsuda, Takashi Tsujino, Hiroshi Sato, Yoshiki Kubota, Kunimitsu Morishige, Masaki Takata and Susumu Kitagawa, Chem. Sci. 2010.
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