TY - JOUR A1 - Edzards, Joshua A1 - Saßnick, Holger-Dietrich A1 - Buzanich, Ana Guilherme A1 - Valencia, Ana M. A1 - Emmerling, Franziska A1 - Beyer, Sebastian A1 - Cocchi, Caterina T1 - Effects of Ligand Substituents on the Character of Zn-Coordination in Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks N2 - Due to their favorable properties and high porosity, zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) have recently received much limelight for key technologies such as energy storage, optoelectronics, sensorics, and catalysis. Despite widespread interest in these materials, fundamental questions regarding the zinc coordination environment remain poorly understood. By focusing on zinc(II)2-methylimidazolate (ZIF-8) and its tetrahedrally coordinated analogues with Br-, Cl-, and H-substitution in the 2-ring position, we aim to clarify how variations in the local environment of Zn impact the charge distribution and the electronic properties of these materials. Our results from densityfunctional theory confirm the presence of a Zn coordinative bond with a large polarization that is quantitatively affected by different substituents on the organic ligand. Moreover, our findings suggest that the variations in the Zn coordination induced by the functionalization have a negligible effect on the electronic structure of the considered compounds. On the other hand, halogen terminations of the ligands lead to distinct electronic contributions in the vicinity of the frontier region which ultimately reduce the band gap size by a few hundred millielectron volts. Experimental results obtained from X-ray absorption spectroscopy (Zn K-edge) confirm the trends predicted by theory and, together with them, contribute to a better understanding of the structure−property relationships that are needed to tailor ZIFs for target applications. KW - Surfaces KW - Physical and Theoretical Chemistry KW - General Energy KW - Electronic KW - Coatings and Films KW - Optical and Magnetic Materials PY - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-589117 SN - 1932-7447 VL - 127 IS - 43 SP - 21456 EP - 21464 PB - American Chemical Society (ACS) AN - OPUS4-58911 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -