Postsynthetic Metalation of a Robust Hydrogen-Bonded Organic Framework for Heterogeneous Catalysis

Hydrogen-bonded organic framework (HOF)-based catalysts still remain unreported thus far due to their relatively weak stability. In the present work, a robust porous HOF (HOF-19) with a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area of 685 m² g^-1 was reticulated from a cagelike building block, amino-substituted bis(tetraoxacalix[2]arene[2]triazine), depending on the hydrogen bonding with the help of π-π interactions. The postsynthetic metalation of HOF-19 with palladium acetate afforded a palladium(II)-containing heterogeneous catalyst with porous hydrogen-bonded structure retained, which exhibits excellent catalytic performance for the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction with the high isolation yields (96-98%), prominent stability, and good selectivity. More importantly, by simple recrystallization, the catalytic activity of deactivated species can be recovered from the isolation yield 46% to 92% for 4-bromobenzonitrile conversion at the same conditions, revealing the great application potentials of HOF-based catalysts.