Water-Etched Approach to Hierarchically Porous Metal-Organic Frameworks with High Stability.

The development of hierarchically porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with high stability is desirable to expand their applications but remains challenging. Herein, an anionic sodalite-type microporous MOF (; TTCA = triphenylene-2,6,10-tricarboxylate) was synthesized, which shows outstanding catalytic activities for the cycloaddition of CO into cyclic carbonates. Moreover, the microporous can be transformed into a hierarchical micro- and mesoporous by water treatment with the mesopore sizes of 2 to 12 nm.