Hybrid inorganic-organic materials
Vaqueiro
Porous solids containing both inorganic and organic components are known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and we are exploiting supertetrahedral clusters for the design of new metal-organic frameworks.
Supertetrahedral clusters are tetrahedrally-shaped fragments of the ZnS lattice. We have demonstrated that is possible to prepare gallium-sulphide supertetrahedral clusters in which the terminal S2- anions have been replaced with covalently bonded amine molecules. We have exploited these hybrid clusters to generate new covalent inorganic-organic architectures. Recent examples (shown below) include a crystalline material containing layers with pores in the mesoroporous range, a material containing chiral hybrid nanotubes, and a two-dimensional structure in which organic and inorganic linkages coexist.
This approach opens up the possibility of creating multifunctional hybrid materials with an unusual combination of permanent porosity, semiconductivity and optical properties.
