We succeeded in applying mechanochemical methodologies to the synthesis of various groups of molecules and materials. The topics we address include:
- synthesis of Metal-Organic Frameworks and MOF–drug composites
- synthesis and surface modification of organic-ligand-coated ZnO semiconducting nanocrystals
- synthesis of hybrid perovskites
- cluster-to-cluster transformations of organometallic species
- transformations of radical species involving TEMPO
- carbon dioxide capture
We apply a wide variety of mechanochemistry-related methods including vibrational and planetary ball-milling, manual grinding, and slow chemistry.
Development of synthetic procedures of hybrid inorganic–organic materials
The evolution of our research interest towards materials science of metal-organic frameworks and other metallosupramolecular architectures was mainly driven by the effort to exploit our experience and knowledge gained through long-term studies on the 12 and 13 group organometallic complexes in applications-oriented research, and this process has been accelerated recently by the original discoveries that have been done in our group. Importantly, we have been able to generate a series of non-covalent open-channel network materials based on zinc oxocarboxylate or related zinc clusters. Others demonstrated that grinding in the presence of a small quantity of liquid can be utilized as a rapid and efficient method for screening, as well as for the quantitative synthesis of hybrid inorganic–organic materials.
Mechanochemistry as a novel tool for cluster-to-cluster transformation
The interest in mechanochemistry results from the growing interest in environmentally friendly and sustainable chemical processes. The mechanosynthesis method proved to be rapid and provided quantitative yields without solvents or external heating. Moreover, the most important benefit is the availability of reactants and products that are difficult to encounter in conventional solution-based synthesis. Very recently our group reported the possibility to obtain new metastable metal alkoxide structures by mechanochemical cluster-to-cluster transformation. Therefore we are going to extend this emerging research area into other metal alkoxides or hydroxides and investigate their transformation under mechanochemical conditions. We are also concerned with developing a novel, unexploited solvent-free synthetic procedure based on grinding in solid state as our primary results clearly indicated viability of this route for the generation of ZnO nanoparticles and organic-inorganic hybrid materials.