Dear Students,
in this week we will introduce a very special class of crystalline materials, which are called Metal-Organic Frameworks or short MOFs. Research interest in this kind of materials has intensified immensely over the last decade. As MOFs are also the field of study of our research group, telling you something about these very special crystals is a matter of heart for us.
MOFs are comprised of inorganic and organic secondary building units. We will take a look at different variations of how these secondary building units can be assembled together and we will introduce the principles of classification of these network-like assemblies.
We provide several crystal structures of MOFs as VESTA files, in order for you to be able to get familiar with the structural features of MOFs at the atomic level. (You can find a tutorial on how to obtain and install VESTA in Unit 2.7)
At the end of this chapter we will be prepared for the next week, in which we will introduce software (called TOPOS and Systre) that allows investigating, determining and classifying the topology of Metal-Organic Frameworks in a systematic way, i.e. to answer the question what are the underlying nets (= linked vertices) and how can we precisely describe them?
Enjoy the beauty of porous crystals!
Michael and Frank
The Fascination of Crystals and Symmetry 