Abstract
Porous liquids (PLs), integrating porous hosts into flowing liquids through intermolecular interactions, attract significant attention, while their controlled synthesis remains challenging. Here we report a controllable in-situ transformation strategy to fabricate distinct types of PLs from the same supramolecular framework (SMF). Two isomorphic polyethylene-glycol-based ionic liquids, IL-Br and IL-NTf2, differing only in anions, exhibit contrasting electrostatic interactions with the SMF. Strong attraction between IL-Br and the SMF disrupts the ionic bonds within the framework, yielding a type II PL, PL2(SMF-Br), while electrostatic repulsion in IL-NTf2 preserves the framework, producing a type III PL, PL3(SMF-NTf2). These tailored host–solvent interactions endow PL2(SMF-Br) with over twice the CO2 uptake and photoresponsivity of its counterpart, as well as record-high CO2 capacity among reported type II PLs. In this work, we establish a general strategy for tunable PL construction through electrostatically guided host–solvent design.
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The data generated in this study are provided in the Supplementary Information/Source Data file. All other relevant data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22125804 and U24A20534), the Open Research Fund of Suzhou Laboratory (SZLAB-1308-2024-ZD005), and the State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering (SKL-MCE-24A01) awarded to L.-B.S. We would like to thank the Key Laboratory of Nuclear Solid State Physics, Hubei Province, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, for providing us with the PALS measurements.
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L.-B.S. conceived the research and designed the experiments. Y.L. carried out the sample synthesis and characterization. H.-Y.J., M.-M.L. and T.Y. helped with the measurements and analysis. M.Z., C.L. and L.D. performed the MD calculations. L.-B.S. and Y.L. are responsible for the major part of writing this paper, but all authors discussed the results and commented on the various versions of the manuscript.
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Liu, Y., Jin, HY., Li, MM. et al. From the same supramolecular framework to distinct types of porous liquids via in-situ transformation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69837-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69837-8
