Three coordination polymers based on different carboxylates, metals and a tri(4-imidazolylphenyl)amine ligand

•Three compounds have been constructed and characterized by X-ray diffraction.•A novel flexible N-donor ligand and different carboxylate anions are employed.•The compounds exhibit different architectures from different 1D to 3D frameworks.•Compounds 2–3 display luminescent properties.

In this paper, three new coordination complexes based on a flexible tri(4-imidazolylphenyl)amine (Tipa) ligand, namely [Co(Tipa)(L1)2]·H2O (1), [Zn2(Tipa)(L1)4(H2O)]·2H2O (2) and [Mn(Tipa)(L2)]·2H2O (3), where HL1 = benzoic acid H2L2 = 5-OH-1,3-benzenedicarboxylic acid and Tipa = tri(4-imidazolylphenyl)amine, have been synthesized under the hydrothermal condition and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, elemental analysis and IR spectra. Compound 1 exhibits a 1D ladder chain with the benzoic anions hanging on the two sides of the chain. For compound 2, it shows a fascinating 1D zigzag chain. Compound 3 displays (3,5)-connected (42·6)(42·67·8) topology, where the identical 2D networks entangle in highly rare parallel fashions to give a fascinating 2D → 3D framework with polycatenation and polyrotaxane characters. Moreover, the photoluminescent properties for the compounds 2 and 3 were also investigated.

Graphical abstractThree coordination complexes have been constructed from a flexible tri(4-imidazolylphenyl)amine (Tipa) ligand and different carboxylate anions. The three compounds exhibit different architectures from different 1D chain to 3D entangled frameworks based on carboxylate anions and metal central variation. Moreover, the luminescent properties of compounds 2–3 were also studied.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide