Interpenetrating polyhedral MOF with a primitive cubic network based on supermolecular building blocks constructed of a semirigid C3-symmetric carboxylate ligand.

By application of a newly developed C(3)-symmetric tripodal carboxylate ligand, 1,1',1''-(benzene-1,3,5-triyl)tripiperidine-4-carboxylic acid (H(3)BTPCA) to assemble with zinc ion in the presence of pyridine, a novel 2-fold interpenetrating polyhedral metal-organic framework with a primitive cubic network based on supermolecular building blocks (SBBs) has been synthesized. The basic paddlewheel secondary building units (SBUs) are connected by deprotonated BTPCA ligands to generate an octahedron as the SBB, which is further connected through the six vertexes by sharing the paddlewheel SBUs to give rise to the 3D primitive cubic network.