Metal-organic nanotube

[1][2] The usage of organic ligands allows the properties of the resulting material to be tuned, as in the parent class of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), but like carbon nanotubes, MONTs are anisotropic structures.

MONTs have topologies that can be classified as helical coils, stacked macrocyclic rings, pillars of metal-ligand chains, or (m,n) scaffold nets.

[1] Helical coil MONTs can be thought of as a linear coordination polymer that is warped into a spiral conformation, resulting in a tube-shaped structure.

In bottom-up syntheses, ligands coordinate to metals and rapidly form pre-MONT crystallites that ripen into well-developed crystals through equilibrium processes.

[4] Careful selection of ligands and metals in MONTs allow tunable pore sizes and dimensions, resulting in applications such as fluid separations, hydrogen storage, as an ion exchange material, and chemical sensing.