Probing the correlations between the defects in metal-organic frameworks and their catalytic activity by an epoxide ring-opening reaction

Yangyang Liu; Rachel C Klet; Joseph T Hupp; Omar Farha

doi:10.1039/c6cc03727e

Probing the correlations between the defects in metal-organic frameworks and their catalytic activity by an epoxide ring-opening reaction

Chem Commun (Camb). 2016 Jun 14;52(50):7806-9. doi: 10.1039/c6cc03727e.

Authors

Yangyang Liu¹, Rachel C Klet¹, Joseph T Hupp¹, Omar Farha²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. o-farha@northwestern.edu.
² Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. o-farha@northwestern.edu and Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

PMID: 27229848
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc03727e

Abstract

Seven Zr/Hf-based MOFs with different degrees of defects were obtained by modulating the synthetic conditions. The number of missing linkers in these MOFs was calculated based on potentiometric acid-base titration. The number of defects was found to correlate quantitatively with the catalytic activity of UiO-type MOFs for an acid-catalyzed epoxide ring-opening reaction. More importantly, we were able to identify a MOF with inherent defective Zr6 nodes, which showed great activity and regio-selectivity for the epoxide ring-opening reaction.