Extreme Flexibility and Unusual Piezomechanical Properties of Zinc-Alkyl Metal-Organic Frameworks: A First Principles Study

Abstract

The behavior of three Zn-alkyl-based MOFs, ZnGA (Zn-Glutarate), ZnAA (Zn-Adipate), and ZAG-4 (Zinc Alky Gate), under hydrostatic compression has been investigated using first-principles DFT simulation, which has proven its reliability in previous studies. Due to the lack of the high pressure experimental data for ZnGA and ZnAA, the reliability of the simulation parameters was tested by taking ZAG-4, whose structural flexibility has been previously reported experimentally and computationally, as a benchmark. All three structures were found to exhibit elastic deformation under pressure up to 15 GPa, due to the flexibility of the alkyl chains that allow the structures to move without disrupting the metal-ligand coordination. Interestingly, the structures exhibit different mechanical properties, with ZAG-4 showing negative linear compressibility (NLC), ZnGA showing positive linear compressibility (PLC), and ZnAA showing zero linear compressibility (ZLC). The NLC in ZAG-4 is attributed to the proton transfer between phosphonate oxygen and water in the structure as previously reported, while the ZLC in ZnAA is due to a dumbbell-like structural motif formed by substructures displaying both NLC and PLC.