Cu2(ATC)·6H2O: Design of open metal sites in porous metal-organic crystals (ATC: 1,3,5,7-Adamantane Tetracarboxylate) [27]

Metal sites play a central role in the vast majority of molecular recognition processes involving biological and synthetic extended systems due to their ability to impart highly selective and specific molecular transformations, transport, and storage. 1-4 Although extensive research efforts worldwide have been devoted to studying the result of chemical reactions at metal centers, definitive structural characterization ofpenmetal (OM) sites, that are coordinatively unsaturated, by single crystal X-ray diffraction have been largely absent. The inherent difficulty in stabilizing such entities in molecular scaffolds arises from their reactive nature and from the lack of structural rigidity around the sites they occupy, which often leads to their aggregation and severe distortion of their local structure features that preclude their characterization as OM sites. In this report, we present a design strategy based on knowledge gained from modular chemistry, 5-14