Porous GdIII-Organic Framework as a Dual-Functional Material for Cyanosilylation of Aldehydes and Ablation of Human Liver Cancer Cells

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained great attention in recent years because they could behave as multifunctional materials which combine the advances of porous solids and coordination complexes. With the aim of constructing multifunctional MOFs, in this study, we choose a Y-shaped tricarboxylic ligand biphenyl-3,4 ',5-tricarboxylic acid (H(3)bpt) to react with Gd-III ions to afford a new dual-functional lanthanide-organic framework with the chemical formula of [Gd-2(bpt)(2)(H2O)(2)]center dot(DMF)(2)(H2O)(6) (1) (DMF = N,N-dimethylformamide) under solvothermal condition. The title complex was characterized by means of elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, thermogravimetric and X-ray diffraction analyses. Crystal structure analysis reveals that compound 1 is composed of 1D helical chain secondary building units that connect by the bpt(3-) ligands into a 3D framework with 1D nanosized channels running along the b axis. In view of its high porosity and accessible open metal sites, the activated 1 (1a) was studied for the cyanosilylation of aldehydes under solvent-free conditions. The catalytic activity of 1a is much higher than that of compound 1, indicating that the exposed open metal sites of 1a is beneficial to the cyanosilylation reaction. In connection to these, the different cytotoxicities of 1 and 1a were also evaluated on four human liver cancer cells (SMMC-7721, Bel-7402, MHCC97 and Hep3B) by the MTT assay.