Dynamic Gas-Bridged Bond: An Opportunity of Fabricating Dynamic Assembled Materials with Gas

Abstract

Gas molecules, as a family of unique polyatomic building blocks, have long been considered hard to involve in molecular assembly or construct assembled materials due to their structural simplicity yet paucity of defined interacting sites. To solve this non-trivial challenge, a core idea is to break the limit of current ways of bonding gas molecules, endowing them with new modes of interactions that match the basic requirements of molecular assembly. In recent years, a new concept, named the dynamic gas-bridged bond (DGB), has emerged, which allows for gas molecules to constitute a dynamic bridging structure between other building blocks with the aid of frustrated Lewis pairs. This makes it possible to harness gas in a supramolecular or dynamic manner. Herein, this perspective discusses distinct dynamic natures of DGBs and manifests their particular functions in various fields, including the control of molecular/polymeric self-assembly nanostructures, creation of multidimensional assembled materials, and recyclable catalysts. The future research direction and challenges of dynamic gas-bridged chemistry toward gas-programmed self-assembly and gas-constructed adaptive materials are highlighted.