Two isostructural Ni(II)/Co(II)-based metal-organic frameworks for selective dye adsorption and catalytic cycloaddition of CO2 with epoxides

Abstract Two isostructural Ni(II)/Co(II)-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), namely {[M3(L)2(bpb)3(H2O)4]·2DMF·2H2O}n [M = Ni (HL-5, HL is short for Hui-Ling Liu); M = Co (HL-6); H3L = 2′,6′-dimethyl-[1,1′-biphenyl]-3,4′,5-tricarboxylic acid; bpb = 1,4-bis(pyrid-4-yl)benzene], have been hydrothermally synthesized and structurally characterized. Both HL-5 and HL-6, which have the same three-interpenetrated 3D pillared-layer framework with sqc306 type topology, present good selective methyl orange (MO) adsorption over rhodamine B (RhB). Moreover, the catalytic CO2 cycloaddition properties with epoxides of the two MOFs have also been studied at ambient pressure and temperature