The First Covalent Organic Framework solved by Rotation Electron Diffraction

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) represent an exciting new type of porous organic materials, which are constructed with organic building units via strong covalent bonds.[1] The structure determination of COFs is challenging, due to the difficulty in growing sufficiently large crystals suitable for single crystal X-ray diffraction, and low resolution and peak broadening for powder X-ray diffraction. Crystal structures of COFs are typically determined by modelling building with the aid of geometry principles in reticular chemistry and powder X-ray diffraction data. Here, we report the single-crystal structure of a new COF (COF-320) determined by 3D rotation electron diffraction (RED),[2] a technique applied in this context for the first time. The RED method can collect an almost complete three-dimensional electron diffraction dataset, and is a useful technique for structure determination of micron- and nanosized single crystals. To minimize electron beam damage, the RED dataset was collected at 89 K. 3D reciprocal lattice of COF-320 was reconstructed from the ED frames using the RED – data processing software[2]. As the resolution of the RED data only reached 1.6 Å, the simulated annealing parallel tempering algorithm in the FOX software package [3] was used to find a starting molecular arrangement from the 3D RED data. Finally, the crystal structure of COF-320 was solved in the space group of I-42d and refined using the SHELXL software package. The single-crystal structure of COF-320 exhibits a 3D extended framework by linking the tetrahedral organic building blocks and biphenyl linkers through imine-bonds forming a highly porous 9-fold interwoven diamond net.