# Interplay between Defects, Disorder and Flexibility in Metal-Organic Frameworks

## TL;DR

This paper discusses how defects, disorder, and flexibility are interconnected in metal-organic frameworks, shifting focus from synthesis to understanding their physical properties for enhanced functionalities.

## Contribution

It provides a perspective on the interplay between defects, disorder, and flexibility in MOFs, highlighting recent advances and potential for functional improvements.

## Key findings

- Flexibility is common in MOFs, not exceptional.
- Defects and disorder significantly influence MOF properties.
- Understanding interfaces can lead to enhanced MOF functionalities.

## Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks are a novel family of chemically diverse materials, which are of interest across engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine-based disciplines. Since the development of the field in its current form more than two decades ago, priority has been placed on the synthesis of new structures. However, more recently, a clear trend has emerged in shifting the emphasis from material design to exploring the chemical and physical properties of those already known. In particular --- while such nanoporous materials were traditionally seen as rigid crystalline structures --- there is growing evidence that large-scale flexibility, the presence of defects and long-range disorder, are not the exception, but rather the norm, in metal-organic frameworks. Here we offer some perspective into how these concepts are perhaps inescapably intertwined, highlight recent advances in our understanding, and discuss how a consideration of the interfaces between them may lead to enhancements of the materials' functionalities.

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1904.09497