2D Crystalline Monolayer Nanosheets Produced from 1D-Amorphous Metal-Organic Framework

Abstract

MOFs are typical 3D crystalline materials, and amorphous MOFs emerges as a new attractive material family very recently. Herein, we report a novel layered MOF, IPM-1, which is synthesized from a cage-like organic linker with extremely weak interlaminar interaction. When subjected to external disturbance, IPM-1 degraded to an intermediate state between the crystalline and amorphous phase (1D-amorphours), in which the layers retain the in-plane two-dimension periodic structure but are misaligned in the third dimension, leading to the loss of apparent porosity and crystallinity. 1D-amorphous IPM-1 is readily exfoliated into crystalline 2D nanosheets with a thickness of 1.15 nm at gram-scale, excellent uniformity and homogeneity, lateral size up to 10 µm, and restored microporosity. They can fabricate wafer-scale thin films and present the first mass-producible 2D monolayer material. This work underlines that MOFs without apparent crystallinity can be idea precursors for the successful preparation of 2D crystalline monolayer nanosheets.