Structural Characterization of Gigantic Pores in Metal-Organic Frameworks

Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are an emerging class of porous crystalline materials that exhibit exceptional
tunability and potential for a wide range of applications, from gas storage and separation to catalysis and drug
delivery. Recent advances in reticular chemistry have enabled the rational design and synthesis of MOFs with
increasingly large pore sizes and unit cells.

We have successfully synthesized a series of highly porous MOFs with unit cell dimensions that far exceed those of
conventional frameworks (>220 Å) which exhibit record-breaking gas captures. These materials show low-angle
diffraction peaks, which fall outside the detection range of standard laboratory PXRD equipment. Furthermore, the
large internal voids result in intrinsically weak diffraction intensities, making in-house characterization particularly
challenging. To accurately resolve their structural features and confirm their long-range order, we require
synchrotron-based small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS).