The chemistry of the coordination polymers has in recent years advanced extensively, affording various architectures, which are constructed from a variety of molecular building blocks with different interactions between them. The next challenge is the chemical and physical functionalization of these architectures, through the porous properties of the frameworks. This review concentrates on three aspects of coordination polymers: 1). the use of crystal engineering to construct porous frameworks from connectors and linkers ("nanospace engineering"), 2). characterizing and cataloging the porous properties by functions for storage, exchange, separation, etc., and 3). the next generation of porous functions based on dynamic crystal transformations caused by guest molecules or physical stimuli. Our aim is to present the state of the art chemistry and physics of and in the micropores of porous coordination polymers.

Metal-organic microporous materials (MOMs) have attracted wide scientific attention owing to their unusual structure and properties, as well as commercial interest due to their potential applications in storage, separation and heterogeneous catalysis. One of the advantages of MOMs compared to other microporous materials, such as activated carbons, is their ability to exhibit a variety of pore surface properties such as hydrophilicity and chirality, as a result of the controlled incorporation of organic functional groups into the pore walls. This capability means that the pore surfaces of MOMs could be designed to adsorb specific molecules; but few design strategies for the adsorption of small molecules have been established so far. Here we report high levels of selective sorption of acetylene molecules as compared to a very similar molecule, carbon dioxide, onto the functionalized surface of a MOM. The acetylene molecules are held at a periodic distance from one another by hydrogen bonding between two non-coordinated oxygen atoms in the nanoscale pore wall of the MOM and the two hydrogen atoms of the acetylene molecule. This permits the stable storage of acetylene at a density 200 times the safe compression limit of free acetylene at room temperature.

Flexible and dynamic channels created by an interdigitated framework of microporous coordination polymers are shown on the cover picture. The compound undergoes reversible crystal-to-crystal transformation from a nonporous (closed-form) to a microporous (open-form) structure, which is triggered by adsorption of supercritical gases. A hysteretic isotherm, shown bottom left, displays abrupt adsorption at a gateopening pressure and equally sharp desorption at a gate-closing pressure. More about this coordination polymer is reported in the Communication by S. Kitagawa et al. on page 428 ff.