Crystalline Capsules: Metal–Organic Frameworks Locked by Size-Matching Ligand Bolts

时间:2015-03-20浏览:1003

Crystalline Capsules: Metal–Organic Frameworks Locked by Size-Matching Ligand Bolts
Hao Wang, Jian Xu, Da-Shuai Zhang, Qiang Chen, Rong-Mei Wen, Ze Chang andProf. Xian-He Bu
Angew Chem Int Ed, 2015, 54: 5966-5970   [ pdf ]

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are shown to be good examples of a new class of crystalline porous materials for guest encapsulation. Since the encapsulation/release of guest molecules in MOF hosts is a reversible process in nature, how to prevent the leaching of guests from the open pores with minimal and nondestructive modifications of the structure is a critical issue. To address this issue, we herein propose a novel strategy of encapsulating guests by introducing size-matching organic ligands as bolts to lock the pores of the MOFs through deliberately anchoring onto the open metal sites in the pores. Our proposed strategy provides a mechanical way to prevent the leaching of guests and thereby has less dependence on the specific chemical environment of the hosts, thus making it applicable for a wide variety of existing MOFs once the size-matching ligands are employed.