Synthesis, Crystal Structure, and Proton Conductivity of One-Dimensional, Two-Dimensional, and Three-Dimensional Zirconium Phosphonates Based on Glyphosate and Glyphosine

The reaction of two small phosphono-amino acids based on glycine (glyphosine and glyphosate) with zirconium under mild conditions led to the attainment of three related zirconium derivatives with 1D, 2D, and 3D structures of formulas ZrF[H3(O3PCH2NHCH2COO)2] (1), Zr3H8[(O3PCH2)2NCH2COO]4·2H2O (2), and Zr[(O3PCH2)(HO3PCH2)NHCH2COOH]2·2H2O (3), respectively, whose structures were solved by X-ray powder and single-crystal diffraction data. The glyphosate derivative has 1D ribbon-type structure whereas the dimensionality of the glyphosine-derived materials (2D and 3D) can be tuned by changing the synthesis conditions. The low-dimensional compounds (1 and 2) can be directly produced in the form of nanoparticles with different size and morphology whereas the 3D compound (3) has a higher crystallinity and can be obtained as single crystals with a prismatic shape. The different structural dimensionality reflects the shape and size of the crystals and also differently affects the proton conductivity properties, measured over a wide range of temperature at 95% relative humidity. Their high thermal and chemical stability together with the small size may promote their use as fillers for polymeric electrolyte membranes for fuel cells applications.