Highly stable and porous porphyrin-based zirconium and hafnium phosphonates - electron crystallography as an important tool for structure elucidation.

The Ni-metallated porphyrin-based tetraphosphonic acid (Ni-tetra(4-phosphonophenyl)porphyrin, Ni-H ₈ TPPP) was used for the synthesis of highly porous metal phosphonates containing the tetravalent cations Zr ⁴⁺ and Hf ⁴⁺ . The compounds were thoroughly characterized regarding their sorption properties towards N ₂ and H ₂ O as well as thermal and chemical stability. During the synthesis optimization the reaction time could be substantially decreased under stirring from 24 to 3 h in glass vials. M-CAU-30, [M ₂ (Ni-H ₂ TPPP)(OH/F) ₂ ]·H ₂ O (M = Zr, Hf) shows exceptionally high specific surface areas for metal phosphonates of a _BET = 1070 and 1030 m ² g ^-1 for Zr- and Hf-CAU-30, respectively, which are very close/correspond to the theoretical values of 1180 and 1030 m ² g ^-1 . CAU-30 is always obtained as mixtures with one mol ZrO ₂ /HfO ₂ per formula unit as proven by TEM, electron diffraction, TG and elemental analysis. Hence experimentally derived specific surface areas are 970 and 910 m ² g ^-1 , respectively. M-CAU-30 is chemically stable in the pH range 0 to 12 in HCl/NaOH and thermally up to 420 °C in air as determined by variable-temperature powder X-ray diffraction (VT-PXRD). The crystal structure of M-CAU-30 was determined by combining electron diffraction tomography for structure solution and powder X-ray diffraction data for the structure refinement. The crystal structure consists of chains of corner sharing MO ₆ octahedra interconnected by the partly deprotonated linker molecules Ni-H ₂ TPPP ^6- . Thus 1D channels with pore diameters of 1.3 × 2.0 nm are formed. The redox activity of Zr-CAU-30 was investigated by cyclic voltammetry resulting in a reversible redox process at a half-wave potential of E _1/2 = -0.649 V.