Stöber method to amorphous metal-organic frameworks and coordination polymers.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38937499.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-49772-2 and PMC identifier 11211336.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The Stöber method is a widely-used sol-gel route for synthesizing amorphous SiO<sub>2</sub> colloids and conformal coatings. However, the material systems compatible with this method are still limited. Herein, we have extended the approach to metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and coordination polymers (CPs) by mimicking the Stöber method. We introduce a general synthesis route to amorphous MOFs or CPs by making use of a base-vapor diffusion method, which allows to precisely control the growth kinetics. Twenty-four different amorphous CPs colloids were successfully synthesized by selecting 12 metal ions and 17 organic ligands. Moreover, by introducing functional nanoparticles (NPs), a conformal amorphous MOFs coating with controllable thickness can be grown on NPs to form core-shell colloids. The versatility of this amorphous coating technology was demonstrated by synthesizing over 100 core-shell composites from 20 amorphous CPs shells and over 30 different NPs. Besides, various multifunctional nanostructures, such as conformal yolk-amorphous MOF shell, core@metal oxides, and core@carbon, can be obtained through one-step transformation of the core@amorphous MOFs. This work significantly enriches the Stöber method and introduces a platform, enabling the systematic design of colloids exhibiting different level of functionality and complexity.