Conductive Two-Dimensional Metal–Organic Frameworks Connected through Metal N -Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes

Two-dimensional conductive metal–organic frameworks (2D cMOFs) have attracted widespread attention owing to their distinct conjugation and stacked layered structures. However, the linkages of these 2D cMOFs are limited to diamine, diphenol, or dithiophenol metal complexes. In this work, we employed silver and copper N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes as linkages for the construction of 2D cMOFs. The obtained materials exhibit high crystallinity, uniform one-dimensional channels, and excellent stability. Significantly, these cMOFs show electronic conductivity and ionic conductivity values as high as 10–3 and 10–4 S cm–1, respectively. The cMOFs can serve as an artificial solid electrolyte interphase on a sodium metal anode, effectively guiding the uniform nucleation of sodium ions and inhibiting the growth of sodium dendrites. Moreover, full cells incorporating the MOFs interlayer demonstrated remarkable cycling stability, retaining 92% capacity after 830 cycles at 2 C. This work not only expands the structural diversity of 2D cMOFs but also provides a new design strategy for functional 2D crystalline organic polymers.