Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a family of crystalline porous solids with precisely defined structures. Recent findings revealed that the pores in MOF could include and regulate guest molecules in crystalline order. X-ray crystallographic studies to these guest included MOF crystals helps to identify the precise structure of the guest molecules without ambiguity. Such methodology is especially useful for amorphous or oily compounds that would not form crystalline phase on its own.<br/>In our work, by utilizing coordination assisted orientation control (CAOC), crystallographic ordering of bonded guest molecules has been successfully accomplished. Our chosen MOF combines coordinative sites with second coordination sphere interactions (peripheral hydrogen bonding) to provide enough restrains on various guest molecules. Most importantly, when employing a coordinative chelator as binding moiety, we were able to derivitize such binder with various reactive fuctional groups as handles to connect with guest molecules. This novel method allows the guests with either high or low coordination abilities to be captured, ordered, and further to be directly observed in MOF by single-crystal x-ray crystallography.

Crystallography in MOF: Ordering guest molecules by coordination assisted orientation control

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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