Zero thermal expansion in metal-organic framework with imidazole dicarboxylate ligands

Exploring new abnormal thermal expansion materials is important to understand the nature of thermal expansion.Metal-organic framework(MOF)with unique structure flexibility is an ideal material to study the thermal expansion.This work adopts the high-resolution variable-temperature powder x-ray diffraction to investigate the structure and intrinsic thermal expansion in Sr-MOF([Sr(DMPhH_(2)IDC)_(2)]_n).It has the unique honeycomb structure with one-dimensional(1 D)channels along the c-axis direction,the a-b plane displays layer structure.The thermal expansion behavior has strong relationship with the structure,ZTE appears in the a-b plane and large PTE along the c-axis direction.The possible mechanism is that the a/b layers have enough space for the transverse thermal vibration of polydentate ligands,while along the c-axis direction is not.This work not only reports one interesting zero thermal expansion material,but also provides new understanding for thermal expansion mechanism from the perspective of the structural model.