Influence of pore-confined water on the thermal expansion of a zinc-based metal–organic framework

Understanding the reversible intercalation of guest molecules into metal-organic frameworks is crucial for advancing their design for practical applications. In this work, we explore the impact of H₂O as a guest molecule on the thermal expansion of the zinc-based metal-organic framework GUT-2. Dehydration is achieved by thermal treatment of hydrated GUT-2. Rietveld refinement performed on temperature-dependent X-ray powder diffraction data confirms the reversible structural transformation. Additionally, it allows the determination of anisotropic thermal expansion coefficients for both forms. The hydrated form exhibits an extremely small thermal expansion along the polymer chain direction moderate expansion in the direction of predominantly hydrogen bonds, and the highest expansion in the direction with only van der Waals bonding. Upon activation, the removal of H₂O molecules triggers a doubling of the thermal expansion coefficient in the direction, where the hydrogen bonds have been removed. Regarding the dynamics of the process, thermal activation in air occurs within 6 hours at a temperature of 50 °C and takes only 30 minutes when heating to 90 °C. In contrast, full rehydration under standard lab conditions (30% relative humidity) requires two days. During the activation/dehydration processes no change of the widths of the X-ray diffraction peaks is observed, which shows that the underlying crystal structure remains intact during the transition processes. Fitting the transformations by the Avrami equation reveals a quasi one-dimensional evolution of the dehydrated areas for the activation process and a more intricate, predominantly two-dimensional mechanism for the rehydration.