Dynamic Gas-Bridged Chemistry: Breaking Down the Barriers in Building Functional Materials with Gas Molecules

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂), alongside other pollutant gases, pose a significant ecological threat. Harnessing the gaseous species as building blocks to directly participate in the creation of functional assembled materials is a promising strategy for addressing this challenge. Yet, gases as typical polyatomic molecules usually have simple structures and lack effective binding sites, which severely impedes their utility in material assembly. Identifying suitable driving forces or bonding modes that enable gas molecules to be involved in supramolecular construction is imperative. Recently, dynamic gas bridges (DGBs) have emerged as a new class of dynamic covalent bonds that marry gas molecules with complementary Lewis pair components, unlocking impossibilities in fabricating gas-linked molecular assembly systems. This minireview will offer a comprehensive overview of the formation mechanisms and unique dynamic properties of gas-bridged chemistry distinct from other traditional dynamic bonds and highlight their recent advances across three main realms, including how to use dynamic gas bridges to engineer self-assembled materials of different dimensionalities, tailor self-assembly architectures of variable shapes, and prepare soft nanoparticles for sustainable, efficient gas catalysis. Future directions and core challenges for developing smart materials based on dynamic gas-bridged chemistries are outlooked as well.