This project belongs to inorganic chemistry.

Coordination polymers (CPs, including MOFs) have been one of hot research topics in chemistry and materials science. The controllable synthesis, structure and property modification, and functionalizations of them are the central issues, as well as the difficulty. In this context, starting from the ligand designs, targeting magnetic and porous properties of products, we have constructed several series of CPs; studied the influences of solvents, temperature, and others on their structures and properties; developed the synthetic method of charge-competitive systems; elucidated the structures-properties relationship; and proposed control strategy. These results contributed CPs chemistry. Main discoveries include:

1. Ligand-guided design, synthesis, and structural modifications of CPs. We firstly explored flexible disulfoxide ligands, with which series flexible CPs were constructed. We found that changing the ligand spacer groups could efficiously tune structures and pore sizes of resuting CPs. These results served as basis for the rational construction of flexible CPs. Some of results were punlished in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.. The reviewer commented it as “opened a new avenue in this field”.

Using bend ligands, we constructed dozens of CPs with open framework structures, and elucidated that the cationic effect played a key role in modifying their structures. We obtained the first Cu(II) CP with a two-fold interpenetrated dia structure. This work has been cited by Science.

We developed the structural modification method for CPs: tuning un-coordinated groups of ligands control the structures of their CPs. With method, hundreds of new CPs were synthesized, including the first example of a CP with an interpenetrated NbO topology, published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. This work has been cited by Yaghi and Zaworotko, and was selected as the “molecule of the week” by ACS. Another important example was a luminescent CP, being published in Chem. Commun. as a cover paper, and appraised as “Top 50 Articles Contributing to the 2008 ChemComm Impact Factor”.

We used series of N-rich ligand to get several porous CPs. A CP showed gas selective adsorption towards O₂ over N₂, which was highly praised by Profs. Férey and Long, regarded it as a successful example of functionalized MOF.

In summary, our works have received highly recognized. 8 representative papers were cited 1219 times by others, and 20 significant publications were cited 2257 times, by Science, Chem. Rev., etc. 3 have been ISI Highly Cited Paper. 6 reviews were published in Chem. Soc. Rev., etc. The PI has given 45 plenary/invited lectures, co-edited 3 books. These works also got two First Prize of the NS of Tianjin in 2002 and 2011, respectively.