Reticular Access to Highly Porous acs-MOFs with Rigid Trigonal Prismatic Linkers for Water Sorption

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) based on edge-transitive 6-c acs nets are well-developed and can be synthesized from trinuclear metal clusters and ditopic ligands, i.e., MOF-235 and MIL-88. The rational design of noncatenated acs-MOFs by symmetry-matching between trigonal prismatic organic ligands and trinuclear clusters, however, remains a great challenge. Herein, we report a series of acs-MOFs (NU-1500) based on trivalent trinuclear metal (Fe³⁺, Cr³⁺, and Sc³⁺) clusters and a rigid trigonal prismatic ligand courtesy of reticular chemistry. The highly porous and hydrolytically stable NU-1500-Cr can be activated directly from water and displays an impressive water vapor uptake with small hysteresis.