An ultra-tunable platform for molecular engineering of high-performance crystalline porous materials

Metal-organic frameworks are a class of crystalline porous materials with potential applications in catalysis, gas separation and storage, and so on. Of great importance is the development of innovative synthetic strategies to optimize porosity, composition and functionality to target specific applications. Here we show a platform for the development of metal-organic materials and control of their gas sorption properties. This platform can accommodate a large variety of organic ligands and homo- or hetero-metallic clusters, which allows for extraordinary tunability in gas sorption properties. Even without any strong binding sites, most members of this platform exhibit high gas uptake capacity. The high capacity is accomplished with an isosteric heat of adsorption as low as 20 kJ mol^-1 for carbon dioxide, which could bring a distinct economic advantage because of the significantly reduced energy consumption for activation and regeneration of adsorbents.