Abstract - Metal-Organic Frameworks : A Journey Through Complex Structures
Our studies employ intermolecular interactions to enable the directed assembly of extended nanostructures in the solid-state, on surfaces and in solution. This presentation will focus on aspects of our studies of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), in particular the ability of the MOF to provide a scaffold which supports guest metal complexes. The crystalline nature of the framework imparts long range order on the supported complexes which allows investigation and determination of the structures of these complexes by X-ray diffraction. In the examples presented the crystallinity of the supported complexes is maintained even following reactions within the crystal and as a result the structure of resulting metal-complex products can be understood. [1] The topic of structural complexity in MOFs will also be discussed. Our studies include examples of photoexcited reactions[2] ‘click’-type cycloaddition reactions[3] and recent examples of highly unusual examples of correlated disorder in MOFs.[4] Our studies demonstrate the ability of MOFs to provide a flexible and robust framework which can act as a host for reactive sites whilst maintaining crystallinity, thus facilitating structural determination of species that cannot be investigated in other environments.