Design of Ligand-Nonbridging Sites in Metal-Organic Frameworks for Boosting Lithium Storage Capacity.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are lagging in the use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), ascribing to full coordination between metal nodes and organic ligands, to a large extent. By integrating a modulator into a ligand with missing bridging functionality, this study elucidates the role of non-bridging defect sites in MOFs in tailoring lithium storage performance. A fully bridged pristine MOF (p-MOF) utilizing the meso-tetra(4-carboxylphenyl) porphyrin ligand is compared with a modified MOF containing non-bridging defects (d-MOF) introduced by a homologous ligand, tris(4-carboxyphenyl) porphyrin.