Surfactant Media To Grow New Crystalline Cobalt 1,3,5-Benzenetricarboxylate Metal–Organic Frameworks

In this report, three new metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), [Co₃(μ₃-OH)­(HBTC)­(BTC)₂Co­(HBTC)]·(HTEA)₃·H₂O (NTU-Z30), [Co­(BTC)]·HTEA·H₂O (NTU-Z31), [Co₃(BTC)₄]·(HTEA)₄ (NTU-Z32), where H₃BTC = 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid, TEA = triethylamine, and NTU = Nanyang Technological University, have been successfully synthesized under surfactant media and have been carefully characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and IR spectromtry. NTU-Z30 has an unusual trimeric [Co₃(μ₃-OH)­(COO)₇] secondary building unit (SBU), which is different from the well-known trimeric [Co₃O­(COO)₆] SBU. The topology studies indicate that NTU-Z30 and NTU-Z32 possess two new topologies, 3,3,6,7-c net and 2,8-c net, respectively, while NTU-Z31 has a known topology rtl type (3,6-c net). Magnetic analyses show that all three materials have weak antiferromagnetic behavior. Furthermore, NTU-Z30 has been selected as the heterogeneous catalyst for the aerobic epoxidation of alkene, and our results show that this material exhibits excellent catalytic activity as well as good stability. Our success in growing new crystalline cobalt 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate MOFs under surfactant media could pave a new road to preparing new diverse crystalline inorganic materials through a surfactant-thermal method.