engleski

Controllable entrapment of fullerene into small- aperture MOF for preparation of tunable fulleretic materials

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with functional compounds embedded in their pores are significant in contemporary materials science. These composite materials often show new or improved properties, such as stability, conductivity, magnetism, catalytic activity, and others, when compared to their sole constituents. Most of the synthetic procedures for encapsulation are through post- synthetic procedures by soaking. The efficiency of these techniques depends strongly on the size of the MOF’s apertures, cavities, solubility, and competition with the solvent, resulting in poor control over the extent of encapsulation. Also, the encapsulated compound may exit the MOF through the same large apertures uncontrollably during future applications. Mechanochemical procedures surfaced recently as a powerful tool and a viable synthetic alternative for the synthesis and transformation of various classes of MOFs.[1] We report here a rapid, tunable, and almost quantitative entrapment of fullerene derivatives into sodalite-topology MOFs with small apertures (aperture below 3.5 Å) by ball-milling.[2] The procedure enabled fine-tuning of the content of encapsulated fullerene, resulting in composites with different solid-state properties, where the small apertures completely immobilized the fullerene molecules. With the precise spatial arrangement of fullerenes, we expect that such materials may be precious in metallo- endofullerenes investigated for spintronics applications.

Mechanochemistry ; MOF ; MOF composites ; fullerene ; ZIF-8

nije evidentirano