Harnessing Bottom-Up Self-Assembly To Position Five Distinct Components in an Ordered Porous Framework

Positioning a diverse set of building blocks in a well-defined array enables cooperativity amongst them and the systematic programming of functional properties. The extension of this concept to porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is challenging since the installation of multiple components in a well-ordered framework requires careful design of the lattice topology, judicious selection of building blocks, and precise control of the crystallization parameters. Herein, we report how we met these challenges to prepare the first quinary MOF structure, FDM-8, by bottom-up self-assembly from two metals, Zn^II and Cu^I , and three distinct carboxylate- and pyrazolate-based linkers. With a surface area of 3643 m²  g^-1 , FDM-8 contains hierarchical pores and shows outstanding methane-storage capacity at high pressure. Furthermore, functional groups introduced on the linkers became compartmentalized in predetermined arrays in the pores of the FDM-8 framework.