The discovery and reticular chemistry of covalent organic frameworks Omar Yaghi UC Berkeley, USA The synthesis of covalently linked organic extended structures has been a long-standing objective. The fundamental problem is that attempts to link organic molecular building blocks into extended structures often led to intractable amorphous solids and ill-defined materials, thus impeding development of this field. This changed when the reaction and crystallization conditions for making covalent organic frameworks (COFs) were worked out and reported in 2005 for 2D COFs and 2007 for 3D COFs. This advance extended the field of organic chemistry beyond discrete molecules (0D) and polymers (1D) to infinite layered (2D) and network (3D) extended structures. The discovery of reactions and crystallization conditions for making COFs using reversible as well as what is traditionally considered 'irreversible' linkages (e.g. dioxin, olefin) will be outlined. The recent developments in (1) making large single crystals of COFs, (2) the first molecular weavings, and (3) applications to water harvesting from air will be presented.
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