Chemistry of Soft Porous Crystals - Structural Dynamics and Gas Adsorption Properties.

Since their prediction in 1998 , guest-induced structural transitions in 3 rd generation porous coordination polymers (PCPs) have changed common understanding on the adsorption properties of porous solids. By 2009, the chemistry of local and global dynamic behavior in crystalline porous solids received tremendous interest, with the studies linked under soft porous crystals (SPCs) . Since then, another decade has passed and novel phenomena in SPCs have emerged that require evaluation, particularly regarding their host-guest chemistry. In this contribution, we discuss the fundamental chemistry of SPCs by characterizing their common structural features and the resulting structural softness and transitions. In particular, we focus on the recently emerging properties based on metastable transitions and those arising from local dynamics. By comparing the resulting adsorption properties to those of commonly applied rigid adsorbents, we highlight the potential of SPCs to revolutionize adsorption-based technologies, considering our current understanding of the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects. We provide brief outlines for the experimental and computational characterization of such phenomena and offer an outlook toward next generation SPCs likely to be discovered in the next decade.