Enantiopure Metal-Organic Framework Thin Films: Oriented SURMOF Growth and Enantioselective Adsorption

The applications and potentials of thin film coatings of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) supported on various substrates are discussed in this critical review. Because the demand for fabricating such porous coatings is rather obvious, in the past years several synthesis schemes have been developed for the preparation of thin porous MOF films. Interestingly, although this is an emerging field seeing a rapid development a number of different applications on MOF films were either already demonstrated or have been proposed. This review focuses on the fabrication of continuous, thin porous films, either supported on solid substrates or as free-standing membranes. The availability of such two-dimensional types of porous coatings opened the door for a number of new perspectives for functionalizing surfaces. Also for the porous materials themselves, the availability of a solid support to which the MOF-films are rigidly (in a mechanical sense) anchored provides access to applications not available for the typical MOF powders with particle sizes of a few μm. We will also address some of the potential and applications of thin films in different fields like luminescence, QCM-based sensors, optoelectronics, gas separation and catalysis. A separate chapter has been devoted to the delamination of MOF thin films and discusses the potential to use them as free-standing membranes or as nano-containers. The review also demonstrates the possibility of using MOF thin films as model systems for detailed studies on MOF-related phenomena, e.g. adsorption and diffusion of small molecules into MOFs as well as the formation mechanism of MOFs (101 references). Show more

The rational assembly of ultrathin films of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)--highly ordered microporous materials--with well-controlled growth direction and film thickness is a critical and as yet unrealized issue for enabling the use of MOFs in nanotechnological devices, such as sensors, catalysts and electrodes for fuel cells. Here we report the facile bottom-up fabrication at ambient temperature of such a perfect preferentially oriented MOF nanofilm on a solid surface (NAFS-1), consisting of metalloporphyrin building units. The construction of NAFS-1 was achieved by the unconventional integration in a modular fashion of a layer-by-layer growth technique coupled with the Langmuir-Blodgett method. NAFS-1 is endowed with highly crystalline order both in the out-of-plane and in-plane orientations to the substrate, as demonstrated by synchrotron X-ray surface crystallography. The proposed structural model incorporates metal-coordinated pyridine molecules projected from the two-dimensional sheets that allow each further layer to dock in a highly ordered interdigitated manner in the growth of NAFS-1. We expect that the versatility of the solution-based growth strategy presented here will allow the fabrication of various well-ordered MOF nanofilms, opening the way for their use in a range of important applications. Show more