The adsorption of small molecules onto functionalized, high surface area microporous materials is important for the advancement of industrial and environmental processes ranging from catalysis and chemical separations, to CO2 sequestration and energy storage. Over the past several years, we have focused our research efforts on understanding the molecular interactions of these small molecules with a variety of microporous materials using in-situ powder diffraction methods to correlate structure with chemical properties. While many industrial processes use zeolites to carry out these functions, an emphasis has been placed on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) since their properties can be tuned by varying the synthetic components. For instance, we have completed a number of studies on an isostructural series, M-MOF-74 (M=Mg, Fe, Co, Mn, Zn, Ni), investigating why certain functionalization leads to increased specificity for applications such as CO2, O2, CO, and hydrocarbon separations. The ultimate goal is to use the knowledge gained to improve the design of new MOF materials.

References:
[1] Hudson, M.R.; Queen, W.L.; Mason, J.A.; Fickel, D.W.; Lobo, R.F.; Brown, C.M.; JACS, 2012, 134, 1970.
[2] Geier, S. J.; Mason, J. A.; Bloch, E.D.; Queen, W. L.; Hudson, M. R.; Brown, C. M.; Long, J. R. Chem. Sci. 2013, 4, 2054.
[3] Queen, W. L.; Brown, C. M.; Britt, D. K.; Zajdel, P.; Hudson, M. R.; Yaghi, O. M.; J. Phys. Chem. C, 2011, 115, 24915.
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