Using small building blocks to assemble ultra-complex, multifaceted metal-organic frameworks with zeolitic, mesoporous subnetwork

• Published in: Chem Vol. 10; no. 2
• Main Authors: Li, Jiantang, Sava Gallis, Dorina F., Guillerm, Vincent, Melliti, Taslim, Luebke, Ryan, Eubank, Jarrod F., Bhatt, Prashant M., Jiang, Hao, Bonneau, Mickaele, Belmabkhout, Youssef, Huang, Zhiyuan, Shkurenko, Aleksander, Wojtas, Lukasz, O’Keeffe, Michael, Eddaoudi, Mohamed
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Cell Press 23.10.2023
• Subjects: metal-organic framework; molecular cage; polyhedra; reticular chemistry; self-assembly; topology
• ISSN: 2451-9294

The assembly of ultra-complex structures from simple building units remains a long-term challenge in chemistry. Using small molecular building blocks (MBBs) in a mixed-ligand approach permitted the assembly of unprecedented metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), M-kum-MOF-1 (M = Y, Tb), exhibiting extra-large mesoporous cavities with small access windows. The ultra-complex cage of M-kum-MOF-1 consists of 240 vertices bridged by 432 edges, leading to a 194 faces-containing tile. This tile exhibits more faces than in any periodic structures (zeolites, MOFs, metal-organic polyhedra [MOPs], etc.) known to date. M-kum-MOF-1 not only possess zeolitic features (anionic framework), but they also contain an underlying wse zeolitic topology, which is observed for the first time.