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COVALENT ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS

Taking stock of stacking

Nature Chemistry volume 12, pages 985–987 (2020)Cite this article

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The manner in which adjacent sheets stack in layered covalent organic frameworks largely influences their material properties, including chemical stability, crystallinity and porosity. The layer stacking of a COF has now been probed locally, showing disorder that is not detected through long-range characterization.

Since their discovery, covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have generated immense scientific excitement because of their thermal stability, vast chemical versatility and highly crystalline and porous structures capable of hosting guest molecules1,2. In the realm of porous materials, layered COFs — also referred to as two-dimensional COFs — are a particular case whose porosity and long-range order arise from the spontaneous assembly of extended molecular layers. In a nutshell, aromatic building blocks with defined geometry and symmetry undergo in-plane condensation polymerization, forming sheets that stack together through weak π–π interactions to yield porous, crystalline, layered COFs.

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Fig. 1: Visualization of different COF stacking motifs.
Fig. 2: Reaction scheme for the imine-linked COF synthesis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Center for NanoScience (CeNS), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany

    Andre Mähringer & Dana D. Medina

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  1. Andre Mähringer
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  2. Dana D. Medina
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Correspondence to Dana D. Medina.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Mähringer, A., Medina, D.D. Taking stock of stacking. Nat. Chem. 12, 985–987 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-020-00568-z

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