Crystalline materials containing hybrid inorganic–organic metal borates (complexes with oxidoborate ligands) display a variety of novel framework building blocks. The structural aspects of these hybrid metallaoxidoborates containing Cd(II), Co(II), Cu(II), Ga(III), In(III), Mn(II), Ni(II) or Zn(II) metal centers are discussed in this review. The review describes synthetic approaches to these hybrid materials, their physical properties, their spectroscopic properties and their potential applications.

In this work, we used different synthetic methods to prepare metal borates. One cadmium borate Cd3[B6O9(OH)2]2.2NO3.4H2O (1), and two nickel borates Ni0.8Mn0.2{B6O7(OH)3[O(CH2)2NH2]3} (2), [Ni(1-MI)6]·[B5O6(OH)4]2·2DMF (3, 1-MI = 1-methylimidazole, DMF= N,...

Three borates (1, 2, and 3) exhibit different interlinkage modes. 1, 2, and 3-based catalysts have shown the best ORR activity with a half-wave potential of 0.78 V for 1, 0.74 V for 2 and 0.79 V for 3.

Four new transition metal borates have been successfully synthesized. Borate-based catalysts were prepared at different temperatures and their electrocatalytic properties were explored. 1-CoB5/600 and 2-CoSB/450 exhibited ideal ORR activities.