Dalton Transactions COMMUNICATION

Adsorption deformation of microporous composites François-Xavier Coudert,*a Alain H. Fuchsa and Alexander V. Neimark*b We study here the behavior of flexible adsorbent materials, or soft porous crystals, when used in practical applications as nanostruc-tured composites such as core–shell particles or mixed matrix membranes. Based on simple models and the well-established laws of elasticity, we demonstrate how the presence of a binder results in an attenuation of the adsorption-induced stress and defor-mation. In the case where the adsorbent undergoes adsorption-induced structural transitions, such as the gate opening pheno-menon occurring in some metal–organic frameworks, we show that the presence of the binder will result in shifts of the adsorption-induced transition pressures. The discovery of soft porous crystals1,2 and their potential us