Unlocking Solid-State Organometallic Photochemistry with Optically Transparent, Porous Salt Thin Films.

Synthetic porous materials continue to garner attention as platforms for solid-state chemistry and as designer heterogeneous catalysts. Applications in photochemistry and photocatalysis, however, are plagued by poor light harvesting efficiency due to light scattering resulting from sample microcrystallinity and poor optical penetration that arises from inner filter effects. Here we demonstrate the layer-by-layer growth of optically transparent, photochemically active thin films of porous salts.