A General Strategy for the Synthesis of Metal-Backboned Molecules with Different Metals

Metal-backboned molecules have been recently explored as a new class of materials with remarkable physical and chemical properties. However, their backbones are mainly composed of Ni atoms and poses challenges in incorporating a wide range of metallic elemental species, which has severely hindered their further development. Herein, we have designed a general synthesis strategy and obtained new metal-backboned molecules with a variety of metals including Cu, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag and Pt in the backbones through a ligand-assisted strategy under screening reaction conditions. The metal backbone with seven Cu atoms has been carefully demonstrated for the synthesis. The intriguing optical properties, electronic band gaps and thermal properties for the metal-backboned molecules have been further explored. This work provides a new avenue on the synthesis of high-performance metal-backboned molecule materials for promising applications in the future.