Utilization of Physical Anisotropy in Metal–Organic Frameworks via Postsynthetic Alignment Control with Liquid Crystal

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) represent crystalline materials constructed from combinations of metal and organic units to often yield anisotropic porous structures and physical properties. Postsynthetic methods to align the MOF crystals in bulk remain scarce yet tremendously important to fully utilize their structure-driven intrinsic properties. Herein, we present an unprecedented composite of liquid crystals (LCs) and MOFs and demonstrate the use of nematic LCs to dynamically control the orientation of MOF crystals with exceptional order parameters (as high as 0.965). Unique patterns formed through a facile multidirectional alignment of MOF crystals exhibit polarized fluorescence with the fluorescence intensity of a pattern dependent on the angle of a polarizer, offering potential use in various optical applications such as an optical security label. Further, the alignment mechanism indicates that the method is applicable to numerous combinations of MOFs and LCs, which include UV polymerizable LC monomers used to fabricate free-standing composite films.