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Materials

Soft Crystals Soak Up Carbon Monoxide

Feedstock gas can be separated from nitrogen, thanks to porous material that features copper(II) cations

by Bethany Halford
December 16, 2013 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 91, Issue 50

CO CRYSTALLIZED
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Credit: Science
An X-ray crystal structure shows CO adsorbed on a porous crystalline material. Cu is green, C is gray, N is blue, O is red, H is white, and noncoordinated CO is yellow.
Top and side views of an X-ray crystal structure of CO-adsorbed onto a porous crystalline material. Cu, green; C, gray; N, blue; O, red; H, white: non-coordinated CO, yellow.
Credit: Science
An X-ray crystal structure shows CO adsorbed on a porous crystalline material. Cu is green, C is gray, N is blue, O is red, H is white, and noncoordinated CO is yellow.

Steel factories belch huge amounts of carbon monoxide as a by-product of the metal-making process. But because the CO is mixed with other gases, such as nitrogen, it can’t be used directly as a feedstock for preparing polymer fibers or plastics. Chemists in Japan may have found a solution to this problem by creating a soft nanoporous crystalline material capable of selectively sequestering CO from other gases and then releasing it easily (Science 2013, DOI: 10.1126/science.1246423). The material, developed by Kyoto University’s Susumu Kitagawa, Ryotaro Matsuda, and coworkers, is composed of 5-azidoisophthalate groups and divalent copper(II) cations. The Cu2+ ions weakly associate with CO. As the CO binds, the material’s framework opens to accommodate more CO. The researchers showed that the porous material could be used to enrich a mixture of equal amounts of CO and N2 to 94% CO.

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