Facile mechanochemical synthesis of MIL-53 and its isoreticular analogues with a glance at reaction reversibility

MIL-53 represents one of the most notable metal-organic frameworks given its unique structural flexibility and remarkable thermal stability. In this study, a shaker-type ball milling method has been developed into a facile and generalizable synthetic strategy to access a family of MIL-53 type materials under ambient conditions. During the explorations of [M(OH)(fumarate)] (M = Al, Ga, and In), we report a positive correlation between the metal-ligand (M-L) bond reversibility and the size of resultant crystallites under the mechanochemical process. The more kinetically labile the M-L bond is, the larger the afforded crystallite size is.