Week 3: The Beginning of the Animation Projects

As I said in last week's blog, I am working on a series of animation projects for six variations that flexible MOFs can take. For this week, I tackled the first three variations, which are Rigid Linker Twisting 0D, Spin-Crossover, and Rigid Linker 1D. The difference between Rigid Linker Twisting 0D and 1D is the ligands's rigidity, which connects the metals together. 0D means that all the ligands in a MOF are flexible. On the other hand, 1D means that one set of ligands are not flexible, but the other ligands can still bend. Again the flexible MOFs only change shape when a guest is exposed to it, such as gas. Lastly, Spin-Crossover is when the MOF shrinks when a guest is exposed. In addition, it will expand back to its original state when the guest is removed.

Here's a visual representation of the difference between Rigid Linker 0D and Rigid Linker 1D:

Note that the red metal spheres represent the a given metal and the bars that connect them are the ligands. The black bar means that the ligand is flexible and the blue bar means that the ligand is rigid.

Rigid Linker 0D

Rigid Linker 1D

I'm currently finishing up the final touches for the animations of the first three variations and hopefully I can upload them in the future. Essentially, it will show that as gas molecules enter a hypothetical MOF, it will bend, shrink, and compress if it's a Rigid Linker Twisting 0D, Spin-Crossover, or Rigid Linker 1D respectively. For next week, I will continue with the next couple of variations and explain how those change their structure. In addition, I will start diving into the specific details of how MOFs are created and what instruments are used. 

Week 2: Blender

For the second week, I concentrated on learning Blender, an open source 3D modeling software. The goal of this part of the project is to visualize MOF interaction with a guest source, such as a gas. One variation of MOFs is flexible MOFs also known as Soft Porous Crystals (SPCs). These crystal structures can bend, twist, or shift depending on whether a guest is added or removed. It is an advantage because structurally rigorous MOFs had a tendency to collapse if the guest is removed.  In general, there are six known variations in which flexible MOFs can change. These are chains, single-type layers, interdigitated layers, pillared layers, expanding and shrinking grids, and interpenetrated grids. Over the next weeks, I can utilize Blender to portray these variations. As of now, I am learning the basics and beginner animation techniques. For next week, I'll be working on the first two variations, learning more animation techniques, and explaining them for the next blog.

Here's what Blender's user interface looks like: