Surfactant-Assisted Nanocrystalline Zinc Coordination Polymers: Controlled Particle Sizes and Synergistic Effects in Catalysis.

Different morphologies and particle sizes of two crystalline zinc-based coordination polymers (CPs), [Zn(pytz)H2 O]n (1; H2 pytz=2,6-bis(tetrazole)pyridine) and [Zn2 (pytz)2 4 H2 O] (2), from the bulk scale to the nanoscale, could be obtained under solvothermal conditions with different surfactants (polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) or polyethylene glycol (PEG) 2000) as templates. PVP and PEG 2000 could act as capping and structure-directing agents, respectively, to influence the growth of crystalline particles and control their sizes. CP 1 exhibits a two-dimensional framework with window-like units and 2 shows a bimetallic structure. Nanocrystalline 1 and 2 were used as heterogeneous catalysts to study how adjacent catalytic active sites synergistically effected their catalytic reactivities in the direct catalytic conversion of aromatic dinitriles into oxazolines. The results showed that 1 produced bis-oxazolines as the sole products, whereas 2 gave the mono-oxazolines as the major products under the same reaction conditions.