iChEM researchers, Prof. Qiaowei Li’s group made important progress in the area of multicomponent mesoporous MOF materials. The result was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. as “Heterogeneity within a Mesoporous Metal−Organic Framework with Three Distinct Metal-Containing Building Units.” (J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b07687).

So far, comparing with single component mesoporous materials, multicomponent mesoporous materials show superior abilities in gas storage, separation and catalysis. Meanwhile, how the topology changes during the MOF synthesis is still a puzzle. Li’s group used 4-pyrazolecarboxylic acid as ligand combining with Zn2+, Cu2+ to synthesis mesoporous MOF by topology. The paper first reports a new MOF material containing tri-metal secondary inorganic structural units with different geometry. Although using one organic ligand, the new MOF contains four different size & shape pores as the result of three different secondary inorganic structural units. The distance between external atoms is 5.2nm in the biggest pore. This mesoporous crystalline material has high surface area (2585 m2 g-1). The unique internal pore connections create more active chemical environment where researchers could design specific inner-pore molecular motion path according to specific host-guest reactions, which could show better performance than single component MOFs. Preliminary studies indicate that due to the complicated inner-pore environment, the MOF materials could have strong interaction with different molecules so that researchers could induce more organic functional groups to modify the materials. And also, Li found that Ag nanoparticles could grow in the pores rapidly, which achieve efficient loading of nanoparticles in a short time.

The first author of the paper is Mr. Binbin Tu, a Ph.D student in Fudan University. The project is supported by the Shanghai Committee of Education, China (Grant No. 14ZZ005), the Shanghai “Phosphor” Science Foundation, China (Grant No.15QA1400400) and the Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, China (Grant No.14JC1400700) et. al..

Paper link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5b07687

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