Programming stacking order in conducting van der Waals metal-organic frameworks through ligand aggregation.

Authors

Yunlong Fan, Jinkun Guo, Ze-Fan Yao, Zhenghan Zhang, Haoyang Zhang, Xing Huang, Zhichao Pan, Luming Yang, Chao Ma, Xinyan Wu, Khoa N Le, Tianyang Chen, Zhichen Xu, Ling Zhang, Hao Chen, Tongyang Zhao, Shuo Qiao, Tingsong Zhang, Qingqing Ji, Yu-Qing Zheng, Lei Sun, Grigorii Skorupskii, Maxx Q Arguilla, Yuanping Yi, Christopher H Hendon, Mircea Dincă, Jian Li, Jin-Hu Dou

Published in

Nature chemistry. Jun 18, 2026. Epub Jun 18, 2026.

Abstract

The physical properties of van der Waals materials are highly dependent on their stacking sequences. However, constructing layered materials with specific compositions and desired stackings is challenging. Here we show that a solvent-directed strategy enables targeted stacking in van der Waals metal-organic frameworks, an emerging class of van der Waals materials. By leveraging the tunable metastable states of conjugated ligands through various solvents, and stabilizing these states via metal-ligand coordination, we enable the inheritance of stacking patterns from ligands to van der Waals metal-organic frameworks. Notably, this strategy enables the controlled manipulation of stacking sequences and divergent charge transport regimes in two-dimensional and three-dimensional van der Waals metal-organic framework single crystals, yielding an electrical conductivity of 1,792 S cm^-1. These results provide a versatile approach for designing layered materials with programmable stackings and tailored electronic properties.

PMID:
42315943
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 19 Jun 2026.

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