22 June 2016
Physicists make the cover of Chemistry
TYC researchers Massimo Riello and Alessandro De Vita from King’s College London present the first example of thermally stable metal–organic framework based on ketone–metal coordination. The work originates from a long-running collaboration between the KCL Physics group and the groups of Giovanni Costantini (STM, Warwick University) and Davide Bonifazi (synthetic chemistry, Cardiff University).
Cu(111)-deposited pyrene 4,5,9,10-tetraone (PTO) molecules spontaneously form two-dimensional metal–organic nanostructures stabilized by molecular coordination with individual metallic atoms, occurring via their strongly electronegative ketone moieties. Crucially, the metal–organic nanostructures can be quenched to one-dimensional acicular phases (cf. journal cover image below) by co-depositing Fe atoms with PTO, exploiting the higher strength of the ketone–metal bond with Fe relative to the bond with native Cu linker atoms, a mechanism which the authors could fully rationalize by Monte Carlo and DFT simulations.
Read the Chemistry paper here.