Dalton Transactions
Communication
irrespective of the nerve agent/MOF identity,36 which is in line Institute of NanoScience and Engineering, housed at the
with our verified hypothesis and predictions. University of Pittsburgh. VSDD and EB thank Dr Ramanathan
In a recent study by Lionetti et al., the qualitative rate of Vaidhyanathan from the Indian Institute of Science Education
oxygen atom transfer (OAT) in heterometallic cubanes was and Research, Pune, India for useful discussions.
observed to increase with increasing Lewis acidity of the redox
inactive metal, thus providing a handle to tune the OAT reactiv-
ity of the cubane clusters.37 Another study performed by
Johnson et al. on cobalt assisted Fischer–Tropsch synthesis
Notes and references
reports a positive correlation between the Lewis acidity of the
metal oxide promoter, product selectivity and the rate coeffi-
cient, thereby establishing a guideline for a rational selection
of promoter materials.38 Therefore, the paradigm proposed in
this paper of using the MOF precursors as models to predict
the activity of the MOF itself should guide researchers in
clearly and rapidly choosing the optimum metals for synthesiz-
ing suitable MOFs for DMNP hydrolysis or any other specific
reaction.
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precursors for the hydrolysis of DMNP, in a basic buffer
medium, was investigated. Our results support the fact that
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of DMNP is the metal node and is dependent on the Lewis-
acidic strength of the metal. Due to a higher solubility of ZrCl4
(which favors formation of zirconium oxy-hydroxide) compared
to Zr(OH)4, the rate of hydrolysis of DMNP by ZrCl4 was higher
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cursors has to be active in order for the MOF to hydrolyze
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Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts to declare.
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Acknowledgements
This project received support from the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency (DTRA) (grant no. HDTRA1-16-1-
0044). M. L. D. acknowledges support from the University of 18 G. Wang, C. Sharp, A. M. Plonka, Q. Wang, A. I. Frenkel,
Pittsburgh through a Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
graduate research fellowship. This work was performed, in
W. Guo, C. Hill, C. Smith, J. Kollar, D. Troya and
J. R. Morris, J. Phys. Chem. C, 2017, 121, 11261–11272.
part, at the Nanoscale Fabrication and Characterization 19 M. C. de Koning, G. W. Peterson, M. van Grol, I. Iordanov
Facility, a laboratory of the Gertrude E. and John M. Petersen
and M. McEntee, Chem. Mater., 2019, 31, 7417–7424.
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Dalton Trans., 2021, 50, 3116–3120 | 3119