Design and construction of coordination polymers with mixed-ligand synthetic strategy

The rational construction of coordination polymers (CPs), normally existing as infinite crystalline lattices extended from inorganic vertices and organic struts, essentially benefits from the development of crystal engineering strategies. In this review, we summarily comment on the key advances in the design of CPs using mixed-ligand synthetic strategy and discuss the relationship between the specifically selected mixed organic ligands and the resulting CPs. Significantly, fine tuning on the structural features of organic ligands, such as spacers, positional isomers, and substituents, can lead to a delicate regulation of the diverse network structures of CPs. Additionally, such mixed-ligand coordination assemblies may also be heavily affected by metal ion, synthetic route, and some other external stimuli such as solvent and pH condition, etc. The advantages of mixed-ligand systems as promising approaches to construct CPs-based crystalline materials with interesting structures and useful properties will also be demonstrated. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.