Volume 135, Issue 7 e202217926
Forschungsartikel

Giant Polyoxoniobate-Based Inorganic Molecular Tweezers: Metal Recognitions, Ion-Exchange Interactions and Mechanism Studies

Ping-Xin Wu

Ping-Xin Wu

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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Zheng-Wei Guo

Zheng-Wei Guo

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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Rong-Da Lai

Rong-Da Lai

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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Xin-Xiong Li

Xin-Xiong Li

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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Prof. Dr. Cai Sun

Corresponding Author

Prof. Dr. Cai Sun

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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Prof. Dr. Shou-Tian Zheng

Corresponding Author

Prof. Dr. Shou-Tian Zheng

Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Inorganic Oxygenated-Materials, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108 China

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First published: 09 December 2022

Abstract

This work reports the interesting and unique cation-exchange behaviors of the first indium-bridged purely inorganic 3D framework based on high-nuclearity polyoxoniobates as building units. Each nanoscale polyoxoniobate features a fascinating near-icosahedral core–shell structure with six pairs of unique inorganic “molecular tweezers” that have changeable openings for binding different metal cations via ion-exchanges and exhibit unusual selective metal-uptake behaviors. Further, the material has high chemical stability so that can undergo single-crystal-to-single-crystal metal-exchange processes to produce a dozen new crystals with high crystallinity. Based on these crystals and time-dependent metal-exchange experiments, we can visually reveal the detailed metal-exchange interactions and mechanisms of the material at the atomic precision level. This work demonstrates a rare systematic and atomic-level study on the ion-exchange properties of nanoclusters, which is of significance for the exploration of cluster-based ion-exchange materials that are still to be developed.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Supporting Information of this article.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.