Controlled Encapsulation of Functional Organic Molecules within Metal–Organic Frameworks: In Situ Crystalline Structure Transformation

Researchers report a facile encapsulation strategy that allows various functional organic molecules to be encapsulated in zeolitic imidazolate (ZIF-8-L) framework by in situ crystalline structure transformation of ZIF-L under double solvent condition. ZIF-L is a 2D crystal lattice stacked layer-by-layer and is made up of the same building blocks as ZIF-8. is worth noting that ZIF-8 maintains a leaf-like morphology of ZIF-L, indicating that there is no dissolution and re-growth procedure, and the crystal structure transformation from ZIF-L to ZIF-8-L occurs in situ.