Nanocrystals of three-dimensional pillared-layer type porous coordination polymers, [Zn 2 (ndc) 2 (dabco)] n , were fabricated by microwave-assisted coordination modulation, and its morphology was controlled by changing the modulator concentration. Adsorption measurement supported that the crystallinity and intrinsic porosity were maintained even for nanosized crystals, comparable to the corresponding micrometer-sized bulk powder crystals.Porous coordination polymers (PCPs) or metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) assembled from organic ligands and inorganic joints have been widely investigated due to their potential application in gas storage, adsorptive separation, catalysis, and molecular sensing. 16 Such properties have been traditionally improved by designing functional organic ligands or inorganic clusters and/or by controlling the overall framework topology. Besides these molecular level functionalizations, methodologies to miniaturize the crystal size of PCPs to mesoscale and nanoscale regimes have been recently developed. 79 Thanks to the enhancement of crystal surface contribution or the shortened total diffusion path of resulting nanosized PCP crystals, the crystal downsizing can be recognized as a novel strategy to tune the porous properties. 79 In addition, the fabrication of PCP nanocrystals gives a further opportunity for applications in electronics and biomedicine. 1013 The key to control crystal sizes of PCPs is to regulate the nucleation kinetics in the crystallization process; rapid nucleation gives small crystals and slow kinetics gives large crystals. 14 The simplest method to produce PCP nanocrystals is to use microwave heating, which induces a rapid nucleation, however, simultaneously results in the production of poor crystalline materials, which significantly decrease the porosity. 15,16 On the other hand, the other approach known as microemulsion requires undesired surfactants that might change the porosity of PCPs.
17,18As an alternative method, we recently proposed a novel fabrication protocol, so-called coordination modulation, by changing the coordination equilibrium at the crystal interfaces during the crystallization process, through competitive interactions originating from an additive (modulator) with the same chemical functionality as linker ligands.19 This rather coordination chemistry approach allows us to control both crystallization kinetics and thermodynamics by simply altering the concentration of modulators, which affords the control of crystal size and morphology in nano and meso scales, and to synthesize highly crystalline materials. 20,21 However, the application of this method is, to date, limited to a framework system that intrinsically has a rather fast nucleation process. 2225 This is because the coordination modulation tends to decelerate the nucleation kinetics and helps to grow crystals larger. Therefore, the framework system with slow nucleation kinetics, which grows as a large single crystal, is not suitable.Here we show that the microwave-assisted coordination ...