Rational design of carborane-based Cu2-paddle wheel coordination polymers for increased hydrolytic stability.

A new unsymmetric carborane-based dicarboxylic linker provided a 1D Cu2-paddle wheel coordination polymer (2) with much higher hydrolytic stability than the corresponding 2D Cu2-paddle wheel polymer (1), obtained from a related more symmetrical carborane-based linker. Both 1 and 2 were used as efficient heterogeneous catalysts for a model aza-Michael reaction but only 2 can be reused several times without significant degradation in catalytic activity.