Three-dimensional metal-intercalated covalent organic frameworks for near-ambient energy storage

A new form of nanoporous material, metal intercalated covalent organic framework (MCOF) is proposed and its energy storage property revealed. Employing density functional and thermodynamical analysis, we find that stable, chemically active, porous materials could form by stacking covalent organic framework (COF) layers with metals as a gluing agent. Metal acts as active sites, while its aggregation is suppressed by a binding energy significantly larger than the corresponding cohesive energy of bulk metals. Two important parameters, metal binding and metal-metal separation, are tuned by selecting suitable building blocks and linkers when constructing COF layers. Systematic searches among a variety of elements and organic molecules identify Ca-intercalated COF with diphenylethyne units as optimal material for H2 storage, reaching a striking gravimetric density ~ 5 wt% at near-ambient conditions (300 K, 20 bar), in comparison to < 0.1 wt% for bare COF-1 under the same condition.