Arene Selectivity by a Flexible Coordination Polymer Host

James S Wright; Iñigo J Vitórica-Yrezábal; Stephen P Thompson; Lee Brammer

doi:10.1002/chem.201601870

Arene Selectivity by a Flexible Coordination Polymer Host

Chemistry. 2016 Sep 5;22(37):13120-6. doi: 10.1002/chem.201601870. Epub 2016 Aug 2.

Authors

James S Wright¹, Iñigo J Vitórica-Yrezábal^{1

2}, Stephen P Thompson³, Lee Brammer⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield, Brook Hill, Sheffield, S3 7HF, UK), Fax: (+44) 114-2229346.
² School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.
³ Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0DE, UK.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield, Brook Hill, Sheffield, S3 7HF, UK), Fax: (+44) 114-2229346. lee.brammer@sheffield.ac.uk.

Abstract

The coordination polymers [Ag4 (O2 CCF3 )4 (phen)3 ]⋅ phen⋅arene (1⋅phen⋅arene) (phen=phenazine; arene=toluene, p-xylene or benzene) have been synthesised from the solution phase in a series of arene solvents and crystallographically characterised. By contrast, analogous syntheses from o-xylene and m-xylene as the solvent yield the solvent-free coordination polymer [Ag4 (O2 CCF3 )4 (phen)2 ] (2). Toluene, p-xylene and benzene have been successfully used in mixed-arene syntheses to template the formation of coordination polymers 1⋅phen⋅arene, which incorporate o- or m-xylene. The selectivity of 1⋅phen⋅arene for the arene guests was determined, through pairwise competition experiments, to be p-xylene>toluene≈benzene>o-xylene>m-xylene. The largest selectivity coefficient was determined as 14.2 for p-xylene:m-xylene and the smallest was 1.0 for toluene:benzene.

Keywords: arene separation; coordination polymer; crystal engineering; powder diffraction; xylenes.