The specific adsorption of porous material has attracted great attention in the field of material chemistry. The research team of Professor Honglai Liu from ECUST had made a breakthrough in the study on specific adsorption materials. Recently, they reported a work, guest-induced breathing effect in a flexible molecular crystal, done by PhD candidate Yujie Sheng under the guidance of Professor Qibin Chen and Prof Honglai Liu, in “Angewandte Chemie” (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ange.201510637/abstract).

    Porous materials show promising application in adsorption, catalysis, gas storage and sensors. However, how to prepare a porous framework with stimuli responsive behaviors and reversible transformation in structures still remains a challenge. For the design of metal organic framework, flexible molecular groups are introduced to realize the structural transformation. In contrast, generally, flexible components need to be avoided for enhancing the stability of porous molecular crystal. In this work, Liu et al., prepared a porous molecular crystal of a gemini amphilphile with rigid group. In this crystal, the rigid parts form the crystal scaffold, while the flexible parts response to the external stimulus. Moreover, they found the crystal exhibits the specific response towards chloroform. This unique feature results from the transformation (bend/stretch) of the tip of alkyl chain in the crystal.