Microporous metal-organic frameworks built from rigid tetrahedral tetrakis(4-tetrazolylphenyl)silane connectorsElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Full experimental details of the syntheses, characterisation data and the crystallographic protocols employed in this study and powder X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis plots. CCDC 989922-989925. For ESI and crystallographic data in CIF or other electronic format see DOI: 10.1039/c4ce00486h

Rigid tetrahedral ligands are of particular interest in Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) construction due to their highly branched nature, high symmetry and also their rarity. Within this context the silicon-centred linker tetrakis(4-tetrazolylphenyl)silane is shown to give porous networks exhibiting fluorite or garnet topology with copper( ii ), manganese( ii ) and cadmium( ii ) metal based nodes. A series of related MOFs built from the rigid tetrahedral H 4 ttps ligand with Mn( ii ), Cu( ii ) or Cd( ii ) metal based nodes exhibiting rare fluorite or garnet topologies have been synthesised and characterised and are compared to one another.