Adsorption-based phenomena are important in gas separations, such as the treatment of greenhouse-gas and toxic-gas pollutants, and in water-adsorption-based heat pumps for solar cooling systems. The ability to tune the pore size, shape and functionality of crystalline porous coordination polymers--or metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)--has made them attractive materials for such adsorption-based applications. The flexibility and guest-molecule-dependent response of MOFs give rise to unexpected and often desirable adsorption phenomena. Common to all isothermal gas adsorption phenomena, however, is increased gas uptake with increased pressure. Here we report adsorption transitions in the isotherms of a MOF (DUT-49) that exhibits a negative gas adsorption; that is, spontaneous desorption of gas (methane and n-butane) occurs during pressure increase in a defined temperature and pressure range. A combination of in situ powder X-ray diffraction, gas adsorption experiments and simulations shows that this adsorption behaviour is controlled by a sudden hysteretic structural deformation and pore contraction of the MOF, which releases guest molecules. These findings may enable technologies using frameworks capable of negative gas adsorption for pressure amplification in micro- and macroscopic system engineering. Negative gas adsorption extends the series of counterintuitive phenomena such as negative thermal expansion and negative refractive indices and may be interpreted as an adsorptive analogue of force-amplifying negative compressibility transitions proposed for metamaterials.

In this Minireview, we discuss the fundamental chemistry of soft porous crystals (SPCs) by characterizing their common structural features and the resulting structural softness and transitions. In particular, we focus on the recently emerging properties based on metastable transitions and those arising from local dynamics. By comparing the resulting adsorption properties to those of commonly applied rigid adsorbents, we highlight the potential of SPCs to revolutionize adsorption‐based technologies, considering our current understanding of the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects. We provide brief outlines for the experimental and computational characterization of such phenomena and offer an outlook toward next‐generation SPCs likely to be discovered in the next decade.

A simple and efficient concept has been developed for the synthesis of pH‐responsive molecular nanocarriers based on commercially available hyperbranched polymers. These dendritic core‐shell architectures can encapsulate, transport, and selectively release polar guest molecules in an acidic environment (pH 3–6, see scheme). The observed release properties render these molecular nanocarriers promising candidates for controlled drug and gene delivery.

A highly porous metal-organic framework Cu(2)(BBCDC) (BBCDC = 9,9'-([1,1'-b[combining low line]iphenyl]-4,4'-diyl)b[combining low line]is(9H-c[combining low line]arbazole-3,6-d[combining low line]ic[combining low line]arboxylate) (DUT-49) with a specific surface area of 5476 m(2) g(-1), a pore volume of 2.91 cm(3) g(-1), a H(2) excess uptake of 80 mg g(-1) (77 K, 50 bar), a CO(2) excess uptake of 2.01 g g(-1) (298 K, 50 bar) and an exceptionally high excess methane storage capacity of 308 mg g(-1) (298 K, 110 bar) was obtained using an extended tetratopic linker.

Negative gas adsorption (NGA) in ordered mesoporous solids is associated with giant contractive structural transitions traversing through metastable states. Here, by systematically downsizing the crystal dimensions of a mesoporous MOF (DUT-49) from several micrometers to less than 200 nm, counterintuitive NGA phenomena are demonstrated to critically depend on the primary crystallite size. Adsorbing probe molecules, such as n-butane or nitrogen, gives insights into size-dependent activation barriers and thermodynamics associated with guest-induced network contraction. Below a critical crystal size, the nitrogen adsorption-induced breathing is completely suppressed as detected using parallelized synchrotron X-ray diffraction–adsorption instrumentation. In contrast, even the smallest particles show NGA in the presence of n-butane, however, associated with a significantly reduced pressure amplification. Consequently, the magnitude of NGA in terms of amount of gas expulsed and pressure amplification can be tuned, potentially paving the way towards innovative concepts for pressure amplification in micro- and macro-system engineering.