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Redox-active organic materials have gained growing attention as electrodes of rechargeable batteries. However, their key limitations are the low electronic conductivity and limited chemical and structural stability under redox conditions. Herein, we report a new cobalt-based 2D conductive metal-organic framework (MOF), Co-HAB, having stable, accessible, dense active sites for high-power energy storage device through conjugative coordination between a redox-active linker, hexaaminobenzene (HAB), and a Co(II) center. Given the exceptional capability of Co-HAB for stabilizing reactive HAB, a reversible three-electron redox reaction per HAB was successfully demonstrated for the first time, thereby presenting a promising new electrode material for sodium-ion storage. Specifically, through synthetic tunability of Co-HAB, the bulk electrical conductivity of 1.57 S cm was achieved, enabling an extremely high rate capability, delivering 214 mAh g within 7 min or 152 mAh g in 45 s. Meanwhile, an almost linear increase of the areal capacity upon increasing active mass loading up to 9.6 mg cm was obtained, demonstrating 2.6 mAh cm with a trace amount of conducting agent.

Molecular recognition is central to the design of therapeutics, chemical catalysis and sensors. Motifs for doing so most commonly involve biological structures such as antibodies and aptamers. The key to such biological recognition consists of a folded and constrained heteropolymer that, via intra-molecular forces, forms a unique three dimensional structure that creates a binding pocket or an interface able to recognize a specific molecule. In this work, we demonstrate that synthetic heteropolymers can be alternatively constrained by adsorption around a nanoparticle, and specifically a single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT), forming a corona phase and resulting in a new form of molecular recognition of specific molecules. The phenomenon is shown to be generic, with new heteropolymer recognition complexes demonstrated for three distinct examples: Riboflavin, l-thyroxine, and estradiol, each predicted using a 2D thermodynamic model of surface interactions. The dissociation constants are continuously tunable by perturbing the chemical structure of the heteropolymer. Moreover, these complexes can be used as new types of spatial-temporal sensors based on modulation of SWNT photoemission in the near-infrared, as we show by tracking riboflavin diffusion in murine macrophages.

Conductive metal-organic frameworks (c-MOFs) have shown outstanding performance in energy storage and electrocatalysis. Varying the bridging metal species and the coordinating atom are versatile approaches to tune their intrinsic electronic properties in c-MOFs. Herein we report the first synthesis of the oxygen analog of M(CX) (X = NH, S) family using Cu(II) and hexahydroxybenzene (HHB), namely Cu-HHB [Cu(CO)], through a kinetically controlled approach with a competing coordination reagent. We also successfully demonstrate an economical synthetic approach using tetrahydroxyquinone as the starting material. Cu-HHB was found to have a partially eclipsed packing between adjacent 2D layers and a bandgap of approximately 1 eV. The addition of Cu-HHB to the family of synthetically realized M(CX) c-MOFs will enable greater understanding of the influence of the organic linkers and metals, and further broadens the range of applications for these materials.

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