Published in

arXiv, 2021

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2104.06715

Elsevier, Chemosphere, (276), p. 130181, 2021

DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130181

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Bispropylurea bridged polysilsesquioxane: A microporous MOF-like material for molecular recognition

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

Microporous organosilicas assembled from polysilsesquioxane (POSS) building blocks are promising materials that are yet to be explored in-depth. Here, we investigate the processing and molecular structure of bispropylurea bridged POSS (POSS-urea), synthesised through the acidic condensation of 1,3-bis(3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl)urea (BTPU). Experimentally, we show that POSS-urea has excellent functionality for molecular recognition toward acetonitrile with an adsorption level of 74 mmol/g, which compares favourably to MOFs and zeolites, with applications in volatile organic compounds (VOC). The acetonitrile adsorption capacity was 132-fold higher relative to adsorption capacity for toluene, which shows the pores are highly selective towards acetonitrile adsorption due to their size and arrangement. Theoretically, our tight-binding density functional and molecular dynamics calculations demonstrated that this BTPU based POSS is microporous with an irregular placement of the pores. Structural studies confirm maximal pore sizes of around 1 nm, with POSS cages possessing an approximate edge length of approximately 3.16 Angstrom