Customized Synthesis: Solvent- and Acid-Assisted Topology Evolution in Zirconium-Tetracarboxylate Frameworks

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) demonstrate strong potential for various important applications due to their well tunable structures and compositions through metal and organic linker engineering. As an effective approach, topology evolution by controlling linker conformation has received considerable attention, where solvents and acids have crucial effects on structural formation. However, a systematic study of such effects remains under investigated. Herein, we carried out a methodical study on the topology evolution in Zr-MOFs directed by solvothermal conditions with various combinations of three common solvents and six different acids. As a result, three Zr-MOFs with different topologies, scu (HIAM-4007), scp (HIAM-4008), and csq (HIAM-4009), were obtained using the same Zr6-cluster and tetratopic carboxylate linker, in which structure diversity shows significant influence on their corresponding photoluminescence quantum yields. Further experiments revealed that the acidity of acids and the basicity of solvents strongly influenced the linker conformation in the resultant MOFs, leading to the topology evolution. Such a solvent- and acid-assisted topology evolution represents a general approach that can be used with other tetratopic carboxylate linkers to realize structural diversity. The present work demonstrates an effective structure designing strategy by controlling synthetic conditions, which may prove to be powerful for customized synthesis of MOFs with specific structure and functionality.