Exploiting Reaction-Diffusion Conditions to Trigger Pathway Complexity in the Growth of a MOF.

Coordination polymers (CPs), including metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), are crystalline materials with promising applications in electronics, magnetism, catalysis, and gas storage/separation. However, the mechanisms and pathways underlying their formation remain largely undisclosed. Herein, we demonstrate that diffusion-controlled mixing of reagents at the very early stages of the crystallization process (i.e., within ≈40 ms), achieved by using continuous-flow microfluidic devices, can be used to enable novel crystallization pathways of a prototypical spin-crossover MOF towards its thermodynamic product. In particular, two distinct and unprecedented nucleation-growth pathways were experimen…

Growing and Shaping Metal–Organic Framework Single Crystals at the Millimeter Scale

Controlling and understanding the mechanisms that harness crystallization processes is of utmost importance in contemporary materials science and, in particular, in the realm of reticular solids where it still remains a great challenge. In this work, we show that environments mimicking microgravity conditions can harness the size and shape of functional biogenic crystals such as peptide-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). In particular, we demonstrate formation of the largest single crystals with controlled nonequilibrium shapes of peptide-based MOFs reported to date (e.g., those featuring curved crystal habits), as opposed to the typical polyhedral microcrystals obtained under bul…

Inside Cover: Exploiting Reaction‐Diffusion Conditions to Trigger Pathway Complexity in the Growth of a MOF (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 29/2021)

Innentitelbild: Exploiting Reaction‐Diffusion Conditions to Trigger Pathway Complexity in the Growth of a MOF (Angew. Chem. 29/2021)

Biodegradable Metal-Organic Framework-Based Microrobots (MOFBOTs).

Microrobots and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have been identified as promising carriers for drug delivery applications. While clinical applications of microrobots are limited by their low drug loading efficiencies and the poor degradability of the materials used for their fabrication, MOFs lack motility and targeted drug delivery capabilities. The combination of these two fields marks the beginning of a new era; MOF‐based small‐scale robots (MOFBOTs) for biomedical applications. Yet, biodegradability is a major hurdle in the field of micro‐ and nanoswimmers including small‐scale robots. Here, a highly integrated MOFBOT that is able to realize magnetic locomotion, drug delivery, and selec…

Inside Cover: Exploiting Reaction-Diffusion Conditions to Trigger Pathway Complexity in the Growth of a MOF

How do you unveil pathway complexity in a crystallization process? In their Research Article on page 15920, Alessandro Sorrenti, Marco D′Abramo, Guillermo Mínguez Espallargas, Josep Puigmartí-Luis, and co-workers show that harnessing a reaction-diffusion (RD) process within a continuous flow microfluidic device, and on a millisecond timescale, is key to enable two unprecedented nucleation-growth pathways during a MOF synthesis.