Crystal Engineering, Syntheses and Structural Evaluations of Coordination Networks

The first part of this thesis (Chapter 3 and Chapter 4), focuses on crystal engineering of multi-metal coordination networks in the aim of developing synthetic strategies to construct porous tandem catalysts. The second part (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) concerns the synthesis and characterisation of Zn- and Sr-based materials using functionalised biphenyl dicarboxylate linkers. A thorough study of conditions to grow coordination networks from a racemic salen ligand, rac-1,2-cyclohexanediamino-N,N'-bis(5-carboxysalicylidene) (H4cdacs), metallated with Cu, VO, Fe and Mn, is reported in Chapter 3. This led to only a small number of successful syntheses. These include a coordination polymer starting from the metallolinker VO(H2cdacs) and a highly open structure, starting from FeCl(H2cdacs), that features heptazinc secondary building unit and unique (cdacs)Fe-O-Fe(cdacs) bridges. The preparation of networks from copper and manganese cdacs complexes were pursued but results that were anticipated based on literature reports were not obtained. The preparation of multi-metal VO(cdacs)-Zn(cdacs) network was attempted but was not successful and similar results to those found here were found in the literature during the course of this work...