Research Overview

Current research projects in the group focus on structure-property relationships in functional inorganic-organic frameworks, such as various forms of hybrid perovskites and metal-organic frameworks. By investigating the structure on an atomistic level, we seek to develop design principles that help us synthesising new materials with distinct and optimised physicochemical properties. Properties of recent interest are the thermodynamics of phase transitions in dense and porous coordination polymers, the response of these to hydrostatic pressures, their barocaloric performances and the role of structure dynamics (phonons) in all these phenomena. Since structural changes play a crucial role in all our research activities, we constantly employ state-of-the art diffraction and scattering techniques such as high pressure and variable temperature X-ray diffraction and inelastic neutron scattering.

Figure 1. Overview about the research topics and activities in the group, of which many of them are interrelated. The formulation of chemical design guidelines to sharpen our chemical intuition and to lead us towards the targeted synthesis of functional materials is the overarching interest of our research activities.

Our research philosophy follows on from our believe that materials scientists already posses an arsenal of fascinating materials as provided in the various structural databases. The mission is to step away from trial-and-error material discovery, aiming for the targeted design of materials with distinct physicochemical properties. Starting point of our projects is the use of our chemical intuition (new age: the identification of the right descriptor) for the selection of appropiate materials from the databases and literature. Subsequently, we aim for synthetically alter their properties, not only for the optimisation of a certain measure, but similarly to insight the fundamental links between the microscopic arrangement of atoms and macroscopic properties. The discovery and formulation of design principles for the synthesis of materials which meet certain requirements is our overarching motivation.

Some overview publications:
  • A. K. Cheetham, G. Kieslich, H.-M. H. Yeung. Thermodynamic and Kinetic Effects in the Crystallization of Metal-Organic Frameworks. Acc. Chem. Res. 2018, 51, 659-667.
  • S. Burger, M. Ehrenreich, G. Kieslich. Tolerance Factors of hybrid perovskites: recent improvements and current state of research. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018, 6, 21785-21793.
  • G. Kieslich, A. Goodwin. The same and not the same: Molecular perovskites and their solid-state analogues. Mater. Horiz. 2017, 4, 362-366.