Investigating the Structure of the Fe-BTC ‘MOF’

Metal—organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly porous 3D materials, composed of metal clusters connected via organic linkers. Crystallinity is believed to be a prerequisite for gas separation and storage, drug delivery, catalysis and sensing applications. Amorphous MOFs possess the same chemical composition and local connectivity, though are almost completely ignored in the literature. MIL-100(Fe) exists in both amorphous and crystalline forms. The amorphous version is commercially available and outperforms the crystalline, though the structure is unknown.Neutron total scattering data will be collected, and combined with existing synchrotron X-ray data. This will allow us to produce atomistic models. We will use these to rationalise performance in this case, and, more generally, provide the first example of a relatively complex amorphous MOF system, that comes from outside the ZIF family.