Atomistic structures and dynamics of prenucleation clusters in MOF-2 and MOF-5 syntheses

Chemical reactions in solution almost always take place via a series of minute intermediates that are often in rapid equilibrium with each other, and hence hardly characterizable at the level of atomistic molecular structures. We found that single-molecule atomic-resolution real-time electron microscopic (SMART-EM) video imaging provides a unique methodology for capturing and analyzing the minute reaction intermediates, as illustrated here for single prenucleation clusters (PNCs) in the reaction mixture of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Specifically, we found two different types of PNCs are involved in the formation of MOF-2 and MOF-5 from a mixture of zinc nitrate and benzene dicarboxylates at 95 °C and 120 °C, respectively. SMART-EM identified a small amount of 1-nm-sized cube and cube-like PNCs in the MOF-5 synthesis, but not in the MOF-2 synthesis. In the latter, we instead found only linear and square PNCs, suggesting that the MOF-2/-5 bifurcation takes place at the PNC stage.