Substrate-Independent Epitaxial Growth of the Metal-Organic Framework MOF-508a.

Plasmachemical deposition is a substrate-independent method for the conformal surface functionalization of solid substrates. Structurally well-defined pulsed plasma deposited poly(1-allylimidazole) layers provide surface imidazole linker groups for the directed liquid-phase epitaxial (layer-by-layer) growth of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at room temperature. For the case of microporous [Zn (benzene-1,4-dicarboxylate)-(4,4'-bipyridine)0.5] (MOF-508), the MOF-508a polymorph containing two interpenetrating crystal lattice frameworks undergoes orientated Volmer-Weber growth and displays CO2 gas capture behavior at atmospheric concentrations in proportion to the number of epitaxially grown MOF-508 layers.