Fluorinated Covalent Organic Frameworks: A Novel Pathway to Enhance Hydrogen Sorption and Control Isosteric Heats of Adsorption

Recipient National Renewable Energy Laboratory/NREL (PI: Justin Johnson)

Status Completed 9/30/2019

Abstract Organic framework materials, as a unique sub-class of carbon-based sorbents, have gained increasing attention for promising attributes toward gas storage. Calculations of the hydrogen capacity of optimized frameworks show potential to achieve greater than 60 g/L storage of hydrogen, placing metal-organic frameworks and COFs near the top of the class of porous materials. However, at the ensemble level, poor stacking creates a quasi-amorphous material with low structural integrity and low effective surface area. The chemical versatility of COFs allows for additional methods for producing long-range order that specifically target the inter-layer interactions in COFs but that leave key pore-accessible linker sites open. These modifications (either during synthesis or post-synthetic) enable a host of strategies to both improve crystalline order for better stability and higher surface area, as well as add metals with open coordination sites for enhanced H2 binding enthalpy.