Volume 127, Issue 5 pp. 1491-1495
Zuschrift

Extreme Confinement of Xenon by Cryptophane-111 in the Solid State

Akil I. Joseph

Akil I. Joseph

Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 (USA)

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Dr. Saul H. Lapidus

Dr. Saul H. Lapidus

X-Ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439 (USA)

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Christopher M. Kane

Christopher M. Kane

Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 (USA)

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Prof. K. Travis Holman

Corresponding Author

Prof. K. Travis Holman

Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 (USA)

Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 (USA)Search for more papers by this author
First published: 11 December 2014
Citations: 15

This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF; DMR-1106266, CHE-1337975). C.M.K. acknowledges the IMI Program of the NSF under DMR 0843934, and we thank Leonard Barbour for hosting C.M.K. at the University of Stellenbosch. Use of the National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under DE-AC02-98CH10886.

Abstract

Solids that sorb, capture and/or store the heavier noble gases are of interest because of their potential for transformative rare gas separation/production, storage, or recovery technologies. Herein, we report the isolation, crystal structures, and thermal stabilities of a series of xenon and krypton clathrates of (±)-cryptophane-111 (111). One trigonal crystal form, Xe@111⋅y(solvent), is exceptionally stable, retaining xenon at temperatures of up to about 300 °C. The high kinetic stability is attributable not only to the high xenon affinity and cage-like nature of the host, but also to the crystal packing of the clathrate, wherein each window of the molecular container is blocked by the bridges of adjacent containers, effectively imprisoning the noble gas in the solid state. The results highlight the potential of discrete molecule materials exhibiting intrinsic microcavities or zero-dimensional pores.

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