Hydroxamate based transition metal–organic coordination polymers with semiconductive properties

In addition to carboxylate and N-donor linkers, hydroxamates are a kind of new emerging ligand to form coordination polymers. However, owing to the difficulty in controlling the reversible formation of strong metal-hydroxamate coordination bonds, reports on ditopic or multitopic hydroxamate coordination polymers are rare. In this work, we combined the ligand H2ONDI, a bis-hydroxamate with a naphthalenediimide (NDI) core and rigid chelating groups, with transition metal ions (Mn2+ and Cd2+) and thus obtained three new hydroxamate coordination polymers. Benefiting from π-π stacking interactions between neighbouring ligands, Mn-ONDI-1 and CdCl-ONDI show interesting electrical conductivities.