The work carried out within MagnifiCOF project is in line with the Annex 1 to the GA. MagnifiCOF researchers have developed a methodology to produce pellets with different shapes from three different COF materials through a straightforward methodology. The development of this approach has required from the synthesis of new building blocks, the development of optimal reaction conditions for the formation of COFs with different linkers, establishing fundamental reaction mechanisms that govern polymerization of COFs, and the development of techniques that allow the characterization of the different COF materials.
For investigating the COFs developed during 2D-INK, several building blocks have been synthesized by the Mateo-Alonso group members and made available for the project. These include building blocks equipped with amines and with aldehydes that can be interexchanged to produce COFs with different lattices.
From the above-mentioned building blocks we have synthesised several pyrazine-type COFs that have proven to be soluble and also some new pyrazine COFs. However, the solubility of these COFs was not sufficiently high for the pelletization studies. For this reason the synthesis of COFs directly in ice buckets have been investigated.
The development of a methodology to produce pellets with different shapes from three different COF materials has required from the synthesis of new building blocks, the development of optimal reaction conditions for the formation of COFs with different linkers, establishing fundamental reaction mechanisms that govern polymerization of COFs, and the development of techniques that allow the characterization of the different COF materials. All these developments are intimately interconnected with MagnifiCOF activities and have resulted so far in (11 articles) in high impact journals (i.e. Nature, Angewandte Chemie, JACS, Nanoscale, Chem. Eur. J. and J. Org. Chem.). Many of these articles have received a lot of attention in social networks (altmetric for each article is indicated) and have been highlighted in other journals or in different news outlets (links have been provided).
In terms of exploitation of results, MagnifiCOF’s pellets have been tested and their performance have been benchmarked versus powdered materials. As part of the in-depth intellectual property analysis, we have validated the optimal conditions for the preparation of pellets to ensure an optimal reproducibility. The properties of the pellets show promising results in terms of synthesis and processability, yet they are not able to compete with polycrystalline powders and hence require further optimization. As the materials need additional optimization a commercialization strategy has not yet been planned.
