Redox-conductive MOFs

Our research project

Charge transport through MOFs has two macroscopic mechanisms: band-conduction and redox-conduction. The first pathway relies on sizable orbital overlap (or electronic coupling) between the molecular components of the framework, either with through-bond or through-space approaches. The second pathway takes place via redox-hopping between discrete electroactive sites including redox-active organic linkers (see Figure 1, above), metallo-linkers and open metal sites of the secondary building units.

Figure 1. Redox-conduction between discrete electroactive linkers. Reprinted with permission from J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 5910–5920.

Such redox-conductive MOFs have many potential applications such as energy storage and electrocatalysis, however, both macroscopic and microscopic details of the counterion coupled redox hopping mechanism are still unclear. Our efforts are to design redox-conductive MOFs (Figure 2) and to understand the influence of all contributing factors, such as different counterions, solvent, framework architecture, ligand functionality, external potential, etc.