Catalysis through Dynamic Spacer Installation of Multivariate Functionalities in Metal–Organic Frameworks

We demonstrate herein a facile strategy to engineer versatile catalytically active coordination interspace in the same primitive metal-organic framework (MOF) for variable heterogeneous catalysis. Different functional ligands can be reversibly inserted into and removed from proto-LIFM-28 individually or successively to bring in single or binary catalytic sites for specific reactions and switch the parent MOF to multipurpose catalysts. Alcohol-oxidation, Knoevenagel-condensation, click, acetal, and Baylis-Hillman reactions are achievable through simple exchange of a single catalytic spacer, while sequential or stepwise reactions are designable via selective combination of two catalytic spacers with different functionalities, thus making proto-LIFM-28 a multivariate MOF for multiuse and economic catalysis.