Hydrogen storage in a potassium-ion-bound metal-organic framework incorporating crown ether struts as specific cation binding sites.

To develop a metal-organic framework (MOF) for hydrogen storage, SNU-200 incorporating a 18-crown-6 ether moiety as a specific binding site for selected cations has been synthesized. SNU-200 binds K(+), NH4(+), and methyl viologen (MV(2+)) through single-crystal to single-crystal transformations. It exhibits characteristic gas-sorption properties depending on the bound cation.

Magnetic circular dichroism study of a dicobalt(II) methionine aminopeptidase/fumagillin complex and dicobalt II-II and II-III model complexes.

The dicobalt form of the metallohydrolase methionine aminopeptidase from Escherichia coli (CoCo EcMetAP) has an active site with one 5-coordinate Co (II) and a more weakly bound 6-coordinate Co (II). These metal ions are bridged by two carboxylate amino acid side chains and water or hydroxide, potentially enabling magnetic exchange coupling between the metals. We used variable-temperature, variable-field magnetic circular dichroism to determine whether such coupling occurs.