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Quasicrystallinity expressed in two-dimensional coordination networks

Abstract

The recognition of quasicrystals, which exhibit long-range order but lack translational symmetry, represented both the introduction of a new class of materials and a transformative breakthrough in crystallography. Concomitant with the exploration of quasicrystallinity, metal–organic architectures emerged as promising and versatile systems with significant application potential. Their building principles have been studied extensively and become manifest in a multitude of intricate amorphous and crystalline phases. To date, however, indications for quasicrystalline order have been elusive in metal–organic coordination networks (MOCNs). Here we employ rare-earth-directed assembly to construct a two-dimensional tiling with quasicrystalline characteristics at a well-defined gold substrate. By careful stoichiometry control over europium centres and functional linkers, we produced a porous network, including the simultaneous expression of four-fold, five-fold and six-fold vertices. The pertaining features were directly inspected by scanning tunnelling microscopy, and the molecule–europium reticulation was recognized as square-triangle tessellation with dodecagonal symmetry. Our findings introduce quasicrystallinity in surface-confined MOCNs with a nanoporous structure and anticipate functionalities that arise from quasicrystalline ordering of the coordinative spheres.

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Figure 1: Eu-directed assembly of MOCNs on Au(111).
Figure 2: 2D metal–organic random-tiling QC.
Figure 3: Dodecagonal random-tiling QC.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Baake, M. Engel and M. Garnica for fruitful discussions and suggestions, as well as M. Ruben and S. Klyatskaya for providing the molecular linkers. This work was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant MolArt (No. 247299), the European Commission FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND AMAROUT II program, the Spanish Ramón and Cajal Program (No. RYC-2012-11133), the Comunidad de Madrid (project MAD2D), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (No. 603213) and the TUM-HKUST Sponsorship Scheme for Targeted Strategic Partnerships. W.A. acknowledges funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via a Heisenberg professorship.

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D.E., J.I.U., N.L. and J.V.B. conceived and designed the experiments. G.L., R.Z. and J.I.U. performed the experiments. D.E., J.I.U., C.-A.P. and J.V B. analysed the data. D.E., J.I.U., C.-A.P., W.A., N.L. and J.V.B. co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to David Écija, Nian Lin or Johannes V. Barth.

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Urgel, J., Écija, D., Lyu, G. et al. Quasicrystallinity expressed in two-dimensional coordination networks. Nature Chem 8, 657–662 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2507

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