Posted by Ben Proudlove on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 10:49 AM
New research carried out by the Kitagawa group has resulted in the development of a new porous coordination polymer that is essentially triggered (in terms of its adsorption behaviour) as temperature increases - opposite to the behaviour of most porous materials. Further work has shown that oxygen is adsorbed more as temperature increases, whereas little adsorption of argon takes place so potentially this material could be used for separation of argon and oxygen (normally difficult due to similarities of these molecules).
Further details on this work can be seen here where they used BEL volumetric and Rubotherm gravimetric systems in combination with other techniques for characterising the material.
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Tue, Dec 22, 2009 @ 05:53 AM
As normal Merrow Scientific will be actively supporting the British Zeolite Association conference in 2010 (BZA2010). Details of the event can be seen on the BZA2010 homepage
This year's event will take place from 24th to 26th March at Southampton University.
The conference promises to, as normal, focus on zeolites but will also look at other areas including MOFs (metal organic frameworks) and "the application of porous solids for energy-related purposes."
If this is an area relevant to your research then we look forward to seeing you there. We'll have a stand and instruments on display as many of our systems are related to these areas of research, for further details have a look around our site or perhaps specifically on our pages for porous materials analysis; MOF research; gravimetric sorption analysis and laboratory stirred reactors.
And finally Seasons Greetings from Merrow Scientific to you all. We look forward to working with you in the New Year.
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Tue, Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:17
Further to their interview with Professor Kitagawa's group Science Watch have followed this up with an interesting Q&A session with Professor Kimoon Kim discussing the work at POSTECH in Korea looking at rigid and flexible MOFs for such applications as hydrogen or CO2 storage.
Metal Organic Frameworks (also known as Porous Coordination Polymers) can be designed and synthesised to meet many application demands and current research is pushing the boundaries in terms of being able to meet the hydrogen storage capacity requirements set by the US guidelines as well as being useful for the capture of CO2...
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 12:49
Interesting paper recently published through the Journal of the American Chemical Society detailing work from the Kitagawa Group at Kyoto University and their research into porous coordination polymers.
Professor Kitagawa is well known to us as he's a good customer of Rubotherm and BEL both of which we represent exclusively in the UK and Ireland. I met him at the recent BZA (British Zeolite Conference) up in Ambleside where he presented on his work looking into Porous Coordination Polymers (PCPs) or Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). They've recently been looking into frameworks that respond to a guest, in other words materials that can be unlocked/triggered by a guest molecule to facilitate a change in their structure changing the PCPs sorption profiles. So in simple terms materials that can be triggered to become more porous.
A brief question and answer section with Professor Kitagawa and his colleague on this subject can also be seen on ScienceWatch.com and further details seen on their group website