Researchers Create Material with Fabric-Like Woven Nanostructure

Jan 22, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro
« Previous
|
Next »

A 3D covalent organic framework (COF) constructed from helical organic threads, designed to be mutually weaving at regular intervals, has been synthesized by a multinational team of chemists and material scientists, led by Dr. Omar Yaghi of the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Dr. Osamu Terasaki of the ShanghaiTech University.

COF-505 is the first 3D covalent organic framework to be made by weaving together helical organic threads. Image credit: Berkeley Lab.

COF-505 is the first 3D covalent organic framework to be made by weaving together helical organic threads. Image credit: Berkeley Lab.

COFs are structures created with organic building blocks that link together. They are appealing because their low density and high porosity has many promising applications, such as for storing gas or for optoelectronics, but previously, synthesized COFs have been too rigid.

Creating more flexible COFs, those that resemble woven fabrics, has been challenging on a molecular level.

The synthesis method developed by Dr. Yaghi, Dr. Terasaki and their colleagues from the United States, Sweden, Spain, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, could lead to a new field of material science.

“We have taken the art of weaving into the atomic and molecular level, giving us a powerful new way of manipulating matter with incredible precision in order to achieve unique and valuable mechanical properties,” Dr. Yaghi said.

“Weaving in chemistry has been long sought after and is unknown in biology. However, we have found a way of weaving organic threads that enables us to design and make complex 2D and 3D organic extended structures.”

In their new study, Dr. Yaghi, Dr. Terasaki and co-authors used a copper(I) complex as a template for bringing threads of the organic compound ‘phenanthroline’ into a woven pattern to produce an immine-based framework they named the covalent organic framework-505 (COF-505).

Through X-ray and electron diffraction characterizations, they discovered that the copper(I) ions can be reversibly removed or restored to COF-505 without changing its woven structure. Demetalation of the COF resulted in a tenfold increase in its elasticity and remetalation restored the COF to its original stiffness.

“We report on a general strategy and its implementation for the designed synthesis of a woven material COF-505,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online today in the journal Science.

“This COF has helical organic threads interlacing to make a weaving crystal structure with the basic topology, and we show that this material has an unusual behavior in elasticity.”

The scientists said: “the woven COFs display significant advantages in structural flexibility, resiliency and reversibility over previous COFs.”

_____

Yuzhong Liu et al. 2016. Weaving of organic threads into a crystalline covalent organic framework. Science, vol. 351, no. 6271, pp. 365-369; doi: 10.1126/science.aad4011

Published in
Tagged as
You Might Like
Chemical structure of the cyclo[48]carbon [4]catenan. Image credit: Harry Anderson.

Chemists Synthesize New Carbon Allotrope

Paestum honey: (A) underground shrine in Paestum, Italy; (B) one of the hydrias on display alongside a Perspex box containing the residue at the Ashmolean Museum in 2019; (C) graphic representation of the arrangement of the bronze jars inside the shrine; (D) sample from the core of the residue. Image credit: da Costa Carvalho et al., doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c04888.

Bronze Jars Found in Italy Contain 2,500-Year-Old Honey, Archaeologists Find

Using Higgs echo spectroscopy, Huang et al. uncovered unconventional echo formation caused by inhomogeneous broadening and soft quasiparticle bands, which dynamically evolve under THz driving. Image credit: Ames National Laboratory.

Physicists Discover Unconventional Quantum Echo in Niobium Superconductors

Johnson et al. report a biocompatible Lossen rearrangement that is catalyzed by phosphate in the bacterium Escherichia coli for the transformation of activated acyl hydroxamates to primary amine-containing metabolites in living cells. Image credit: Johnson et al., doi: 10.1038/s41557-025-01845-5.

Common Gut Bacterium Can Turn Everyday Plastic Waste into Paracetamol

This conceptual illustration of a computer based on 2D molecules displays an actual scanning electron microscope image of the computer fabricated by Ghosh et al. Image credit: Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay / Penn State.

Researchers Develop World’s First Non-Silicon 2D Computer

Srinivasan et al. demonstrated that plant-based polysaccharides showed better microplastic removal efficiency than polyacrylamide, which is commercially used for water treatment. Image credit: Srinivasan et al., doi: 10.1021/acsomega.4c07476.

Fenugreek and Okra Extracts Remove Up To 90% of Microplastics from Water Sources, Study Shows

To make livermorium, Gates et al. fused isotopes of titanium and plutonium. Image credit: Jenny Nuss, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Livermorium: Physicists Find Novel Way to Produce Element 116

Share This Page