Tuning interfacial interactions for bottom‐up assembly of surface‐anchored metal‐organic frameworks to tailor film morphology and pattern surface features

Surface-anchored metal-organic frameworks (surMOFs) integrate nanoporous supramolecular MOF materials directly into architectures for applications such as gas storage, chemical sensing, and energy storage. Layer-by-layer solution-phase deposition of the MOF-14 components (1,3,5-tris(4-carboxyphenyl)benzene copper (II) dimers, respectively) produces a porous conformal film on carboxyl-terminated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). In this research, formation ultrathin (less than 25 nm) surMOF films codeposited bicomponent SAMs microcontact printed is investigated by atomic force microscopy, ellipsometry, infrared spectroscopy, contact angle goniometry. composed methyl-terminated alkanethiols assembled gold substrates inhibit formation, whereas promote MOF-14-based growth. To tune density carboxyl groups that anchor film, methyl- varying concentrations are gold. This systematic study demonstrates how morphology impacted these with mixed surface functionalities. Chemical patterning methods SAMs, printing (μCP), commonly have functionalities within certain regions pattern. Insights gained regarding affect applied herein to optimize μCP method produce chemically patterned selectively direct assembly high-quality features.