The development of catalysts able to assist industrially important chemical processes is a topic of high importance. In view of the catalytic capabilities of small metal clusters, research efforts are being focused on the synthesis of novel catalysts bearing such active sites. Here we report a heterogeneous catalyst consisting of Pd clusters with mixed-valence 0/+1 oxidation states, stabilized and homogeneously organized within the walls of a metal-organic framework (MOF). The resulting solid catalyst outperforms state-of-the-art metal catalysts in carbene-mediated reactions of diazoacetates, with high yields (>90%) and turnover numbers (up to 100,000). In addition, the MOF-supported Pd clusters retain their catalytic activity in repeated batch and flow reactions (>20 cycles). Our findings demonstrate how this synthetic approach may now instruct the future design of heterogeneous catalysts with advantageous reaction capabilities for other important processes.

A novel chiral 3D bioMOF exhibiting functional channels with thio-alkyl chains derived from the natural amino acid l-methionine (1) has been rationally prepared. The well-known strong affinity of gold for sulfur derivatives, together with the extremely high flexibility of the thioether "arms" decorating the channels, account for a selective capture of gold(III) and gold(I) salts in the presence of other metal cations typically found in electronic wastes. The X-ray single-crystal structures of the different gold adsorbates Au(III)@1 and Au(I)@1 suggest that the selective metal capture occurs in a metal ion recognition process somehow mimicking what happens in biological systems and protein receptors. Both Au(III)@1 and Au(I)@1 display high activity as heterogeneous catalyst for the hydroalkoxylation of alkynes, further expanding the application of these novel hybrid materials.

Such exciting properties as porosity and single-ion magnetic behavior are merged into a single unique material which affords the first in-depth study of guest-dependent SIM behavior in a MOF.

Metallosupramolecular complexes constitute an important advance in the emerging fields of molecular spintronics and quantum computation and a useful platform in the development of active components of spintronic circuits and quantum computers for applications in information processing and storage. The external control of chemical reactivity (electro- and photochemical) and physical properties (electronic and magnetic) in metallosupramolecular complexes is a current challenge in supramolecular coordination chemistry, which lies at the interface of several other supramolecular disciplines, including electro-, photo-, and magnetochemistry. The specific control of current flow or spin delocalization through a molecular assembly in response to one or many input signals leads to the concept of developing a molecule-based spintronics that can be viewed as a potential alternative to the classical molecule-based electronics. A great variety of factors can influence over these electronically or magnetically coupled, metallosupramolecular complexes in a reversible manner, electronic or photonic external stimuli being the most promising ones. The response ability of the metal centers and/or the organic bridging ligands to the application of an electric field or light irradiation, together with the geometrical features that allow the precise positioning in space of substituent groups, make these metal-organic systems particularly suitable to build highly integrated molecular spintronic circuits. In this Account, we describe the chemistry and physics of dinuclear copper(II) metallacyclophanes with oxamato-containing dinucleating ligands featuring redox- and photoactive aromatic spacers. Our recent works on dicopper(II) metallacyclophanes and earlier ones on related organic cyclophanes are now compared in a critical manner. Special focus is placed on the ligand design as well as in the combination of experimental and computational methods to demonstrate the multifunctionality nature of these metallosupramolecular complexes. This new class of oxamato-based dicopper(II) metallacyclophanes affords an excellent synthetic and theoretical set of models for both chemical and physical fundamental studies on redox- and photo-triggered, long-distance electron exchange phenomena, which are two major topics in molecular magnetism and molecular electronics. Apart from their use as ground tests for the fundamental research on the relative importance of the spin delocalization and spin polarization mechanisms of the electron exchange interaction through extended π-conjugated aromatic ligands in polymetallic complexes, oxamato-based dicopper(II) metallacyclophanes possessing spin-containing electro- and chromophores at the metal and/or the ligand counterparts emerge as potentially active (magnetic and electronic) molecular components to build a metal-based spintronic circuit. They are thus unique examples of multifunctional magnetic complexes to get single-molecule spintronic devices by controlling and allowing the spin communication, when ser...

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