Coordination-Driven Self-Assembly in Polymer-Inorganic Hybrid Materials

As the library of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and metal-organic cages (MOCs) continues to grow, their porous, ordered structures are increasingly being applied toward diverse applications that include separations, energy production and storage, and biomedicine. One outstanding challenge facing the adoption of these materials is their limited processability owing to their crystalline or microcrystalline nature. In this perspective, we highlight advances in the hybridization of MOFs or MOCs with organic polymers to form materials with both high functionality and processability. Although this is a relatively new area of research, there are a variety of examples that show how these hybrid materials can be designed to exhibit promising properties derived from both their polymer and inorganic components. We organize our discussion around simple mixed composites and advanced materials that draw upon covalent interactions between polymers and MOF/MOCs. We invoke both pioneering examples from the literature as well as our own work using soluble MOCs and our strategy to use postsynthetic ligand substitution to make high quality hybrid materials.