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Analogy powered by prediction and structural invariants: computationally-led discovery of a mesoporous hydrogen-bonded organic cage crystal

Analogy powered by prediction and structural invariants: computationally-led discovery of a mesoporous hydrogen-bonded organic cage crystal
Analogy powered by prediction and structural invariants: computationally-led discovery of a mesoporous hydrogen-bonded organic cage crystal

Mesoporous molecular crystals have potential applications in separation and catalysis, but they are rare and hard to design because many weak interactions compete during crystallization, and most molecules have an energetic preference for close packing. Here, we combine crystal structure prediction (CSP) with structural invariants to continuously qualify the similarity between predicted crystal structures for related molecules. This allows isomorphous substitution strategies, which can be unreliable for molecular crystals, to be augmented by a priori prediction, thus leveraging the power of both approaches. We used this combined approach to discover a rare example of a low-density (0.54 g cm -3) mesoporous hydrogen-bonded framework (HOF), 3D-CageHOF-1. This structure comprises an organic cage (Cage-3-NH 2) that was predicted to form kinetically trapped, low-density polymorphs via CSP. Pointwise distance distribution structural invariants revealed five predicted forms of Cage-3-NH 2that are analogous to experimentally realized porous crystals of a chemically different but geometrically similar molecule, T2. More broadly, this approach overcomes the difficulties in comparing predicted molecular crystals with varying lattice parameters, thus allowing for the systematic comparison of energy-structure landscapes for chemically dissimilar molecules.

0002-7863
9893-9901
Zhu, Qiang
502d5e78-d9ec-4c92-a676-9a39fdfa0e75
Johal, Jay
4c6e6d6f-f131-48d6-bf72-27154b3f6e76
Widdowson, Dan E.
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Pang, Zhongfu
feb19c56-c7f9-41de-aa1b-600a4110cae4
Li, Boyu
fe73b0de-8aa3-4476-a0e1-fdee6b60d6a1
Kane, Christopher M.
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Kurlin, Vitaliy
bdea1c10-1387-4d1e-99e0-b654b4a5b349
Day, Graeme M.
e3be79ba-ad12-4461-b735-74d5c4355636
Little, Marc A.
2499da90-f2de-4179-a41e-4931b3409584
Cooper, Andrew I.
8cad6e52-32d3-487b-98e3-3f01cec43553
Zhu, Qiang
502d5e78-d9ec-4c92-a676-9a39fdfa0e75
Johal, Jay
4c6e6d6f-f131-48d6-bf72-27154b3f6e76
Widdowson, Dan E.
114b3bf9-2cdb-4061-8ef8-f331a692da8c
Pang, Zhongfu
feb19c56-c7f9-41de-aa1b-600a4110cae4
Li, Boyu
fe73b0de-8aa3-4476-a0e1-fdee6b60d6a1
Kane, Christopher M.
62ee311a-402b-4a95-abdc-b3755b1cdcd0
Kurlin, Vitaliy
bdea1c10-1387-4d1e-99e0-b654b4a5b349
Day, Graeme M.
e3be79ba-ad12-4461-b735-74d5c4355636
Little, Marc A.
2499da90-f2de-4179-a41e-4931b3409584
Cooper, Andrew I.
8cad6e52-32d3-487b-98e3-3f01cec43553

Zhu, Qiang, Johal, Jay, Widdowson, Dan E., Pang, Zhongfu, Li, Boyu, Kane, Christopher M., Kurlin, Vitaliy, Day, Graeme M., Little, Marc A. and Cooper, Andrew I. (2022) Analogy powered by prediction and structural invariants: computationally-led discovery of a mesoporous hydrogen-bonded organic cage crystal. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 144 (22), 9893-9901. (doi:10.1021/jacs.2c02653).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Mesoporous molecular crystals have potential applications in separation and catalysis, but they are rare and hard to design because many weak interactions compete during crystallization, and most molecules have an energetic preference for close packing. Here, we combine crystal structure prediction (CSP) with structural invariants to continuously qualify the similarity between predicted crystal structures for related molecules. This allows isomorphous substitution strategies, which can be unreliable for molecular crystals, to be augmented by a priori prediction, thus leveraging the power of both approaches. We used this combined approach to discover a rare example of a low-density (0.54 g cm -3) mesoporous hydrogen-bonded framework (HOF), 3D-CageHOF-1. This structure comprises an organic cage (Cage-3-NH 2) that was predicted to form kinetically trapped, low-density polymorphs via CSP. Pointwise distance distribution structural invariants revealed five predicted forms of Cage-3-NH 2that are analogous to experimentally realized porous crystals of a chemically different but geometrically similar molecule, T2. More broadly, this approach overcomes the difficulties in comparing predicted molecular crystals with varying lattice parameters, thus allowing for the systematic comparison of energy-structure landscapes for chemically dissimilar molecules.

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Accepted/In Press date: 9 May 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 29 May 2022
Published date: 8 June 2022
Additional Information: Funding Information: The authors received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/V026887/1, EP/R029431, EP/T022213, EP/N004884/1, and EP/R018472/1) and the Leverhulme Trust via the Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design. This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 856405). V.K. received an Industrial Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering (IF2122/186). Q.Z. received a University of Liverpool Graduate Association (Hong Kong) Postgraduate Scholarship. Funding Information: We acknowledge the use of the IRIDIS High-Performance Computing Facility and associated support services at the University of Southampton. Via our membership of the UK’s HEC Materials Chemistry Consortium, which is funded by the EPSRC (EP/R029431), this work used the UK Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub for computational resources, the MMM Hub, which is partially funded by the EPSRC (EP/P020194/1 and EP/T022213/1). V.K. thanks the Royal Academy of Engineering for an Industry Fellowship (IF2122/186). Q.Z. thanks the University of Liverpool Graduate Association (Hong Kong) for a Postgraduate Scholarship. The authors thank Yu Che for helping to prepare the figures. Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 457316
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/457316
ISSN: 0002-7863
PURE UUID: 9b91ead1-7e5f-437b-bc32-f21ab56dd2d9
ORCID for Graeme M. Day: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8396-2771

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Date deposited: 01 Jun 2022 16:32
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:50

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Contributors

Author: Qiang Zhu
Author: Jay Johal
Author: Dan E. Widdowson
Author: Zhongfu Pang
Author: Boyu Li
Author: Christopher M. Kane
Author: Vitaliy Kurlin
Author: Graeme M. Day ORCID iD
Author: Marc A. Little
Author: Andrew I. Cooper

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