Amorphous-amorphous transition in a porous coordination polymer

Chem Commun (Camb). 2017 Jul 4;53(52):7060-7063. doi: 10.1039/c7cc03333h. Epub 2017 Jun 16.

Abstract

The amorphous state plays a key role in porous coordination polymer and metal-organic framework phase transitions. We investigate a crystalline-to-amorphous-to-amorphous-to-crystalline (CAAC) phase transition in a Zn based coordination polymer, by X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and X-ray pair distribution function (PDF) analysis. We show that the system shows two distinct amorphous phases upon heating. The first involves a reversible transition to a desolvated form of the original network, followed by an irreversible transition to an intermediate phase which has elongated Zn-I bonds.