Designing Functional Metal–Organic Frameworks by Imparting a Hexanuclear Copper-Based Secondary Building Unit Specific Properties: Structural Correlation With Magnetic and Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract

In continuation of our research interest in pyrazole-based multifunctional metal organic frameworks (MOFs), we report here three Cu­(II) MOFs using pyrazole and various aromatic carboxylic acid-based ligands. The main theme of interest is to design functional MOFs by imparting a multinuclear metal center as a secondary building unit (SBU). Accordingly, three MOFs are synthesized based on a hexanuclear Cu-pyrazolate unit as the SBU with some intriguing structural networks like (4,4) type herringbone grid or an archetypal Kagomé topology. We have successfully synthesized functional MOFs by incorporating hexanuclear Cu-pyrazolate SBU-specific properties viz. magnetism and catalysis, the central theme of this work. All the MOFs show some photocatalytic degradation of toxic dye molecules. On the other hand, magnetic behaviors of <b>MOF-2</b> and <b>MOF-3</b> associated with the Cu₆ unit have also been investigated