Controllable thermal deligandation treatment is a novel and flexible post-synthetic pore engineering technique to generate quasi metal-organic frameworks (Q-MOFs) via partial removal of linkers by precise thermal deligandation process in different atmospheres. Q-MOFs with favorably high specific surface area and an abundance of coordinatively unsaturated metal sites have a unique potential to serve as catalysts. [1] Also, the simultaneous existence of micro, meso, or macropores in the structure facilitates the diffusion of reactants into the framework and easy access to the catalytic centers. The resulting Q-MOF compounds are very likely to inherit those advantages of their parents, while their performance even surpass those of the primitive MOF and related metal compounds because of the generation of large-scale structural defects in their frameworks [2]. The combination of these features makes Q-MOFs good candidates for catalysis and opens a new path for designing effective MOF-derived catalysts [3].
