Reticular chemistry for the rational design of mechanically robust mesoporous merged-net metal-organic frameworks

Access to metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with enhanced me-chanical stability is key to their successful deployment in practical applications. However, the high porosity of the material often af-fects mechanical stability. In this article, to achieve highly porous MOFs with enhanced mechanical stability, we explored the merged-net approach where two relatively fragile frameworks were merged into a robust MOF structure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by computationally evaluating me-chanical properties of sph-MOFs with varying lengths of linkers. Prominently, we pinpoint the significance of triangular rigidity on the robustness of large-pore MOFs and, subsequently, designed and synthesized a rare earth (RE)-based RE-sph-MOF-5 by the retic-ulation of hexanuclear RE clusters, tritopic linkers, and unprecedent-edly large planar hexatopic linkers containing 19 phenyl rings. The mechanical properties of sph-MOFs were characterized and quanti-fied using amplitude-frequency modulation (AM-FM) bimodal atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses. Markedly, the mesoporous RE-sph-MOF-5 expresses high mechanical stability despite its large mesoporous cavities.